Update:  My pillows were featured in Country Living, DIY Network, and Yahoo DIY!  Check out my Featured page for links!

Now that the weather is changing from fall to winter, we’ve been looking for subtle ways to cozify our home.  These Pottery Barn pillows have been on our radar… but come on, $70 for a pillow cover?  We nixed that idea and decided to make our own out of old sweaters.  With a little help from my mom, we pulled it off for less than $7 each!

Here’s how to do it.

1.  Figure out what size pillows to use.  We have a few extra euro size pillows (26×26) that I wanted to use for this project, so we kept this in mind during our sweater search.

2.  Find old/discounted sweaters that look cozy.  My mom found white/ivory sweaters at thrift stores for $7 each, and happened to buy them on a day when they were an extra 25% off – woo!  We tried to find sweaters that were mens’ L/XL to fit over my 26″ pillows, but would have tried to get smaller ones for smaller pillows.

3.  Fit, Measure, and Sew.  Before doing any cutting, we slipped the sweater over the pillow to see if it fit, and determine where to sew.  We turned the sweater inside out.  My mom then used her sewing machine to sew a straight line across the top of the sweater, just below the neck hole, and up the sides of the sweater right outside the arm holes.  We decided to leave the bottom open so it could be easily slipped on and off the pillow (this worked especially well because the sweater we were working with was a little gathered at the bottom).

4.  Cut.   Once the neck and arm holes were sewn (inside out), we cut off the extra fabric and turned it right side out.

5.  Slip the cover onto your pillow and be happy you didn’t spend $70 at Pottery Barn!

Psst!  Click here to see what we did with the extra sleeves.