My Secret for Textured Bohemian Pillows

I got a great question from a lovely reader about my bedroom pillows.  And it hit me.  I haven’t shared my pillow secret since back before I started White Buffalo!  I know many of you are new around here and may not have seen that old post.  I rely on this secret for every single room redo. 

To me, nothing spruces up a room like some throw pillows.  It’s no secret around here that I am in love with kilim, texture, and bohemian.  My favorite way to infuse that into a space is through pillows.

But kilim pillows are expensive!  In comes my life-changing pillow discovery.

I make all of my textured, kilim-style pillows from cheap rag rugs.

Remember these kilim pillows from last summer?

They started out as $3 rag rugs from Fred’s Dollar Store.

No joke.  I about died when I stumbled upon these beauties!  I laid like a hundred out on the floor of the store and was so in love with the prints!  But I couldn’t decide how I would use a million 2×3′ rugs.

Then, it hit me.  They look like the kilim pillows I’d been swooning over for so long!  So pillows, they became.

These have remained some of my very favorite pillows ever.

When I went to design our bedroom, I pictured two kilim pillow shams with a textured, colorful pillow in front.  I thought it would really pop off of the white bedding.

I searched for kilim pillow shams.  I’m not really sure why I even bothered because I could’ve told you, THEY’RE FREAKING EXPENSIVE!

I know some people have $60-$100 to throw on a pillow (yes, a single pillow), but I just don’t.

And then I had a bang my hand against my forehead moment.  What to do when the textured, kilim pillows I want are too expensive?

Go on a rug hunt!

I headed out to Garden Ridge and hit the jackpot on my first stop.  I remembered Garden Ridge having a large selection of rag rugs for really cheap.

See?  Jackpot, I say.

The lumbar pillow started out as a 2×3′ rag rug that was $2.99!!!  The key with that style of woven rugs is DO NOT CUT IT.  I made this mistake when making my rag rug covered ottoman.  The entire thing falls apart.

So, for this rug, we backed it in white and left it the full length so that the fringe still showed on the end.  These rugs are thin enough, too, that you can run it right through your machine.  We used pillow stuffing for the inside so that you can do a more custom size and maximize the print!

Lovely, bohemain, textured, pillow goodness in a couple of minutes for $5 or so?  Yes, please!

Those kilim-style pillow shams were such a pleasant surprise!

They were a little more pricey, but I could not turn them down.

They were 2×3′ rugs as well, but were about twice as thick as the other.  I immediately knew it wouldn’t run through a machine, but it just had to work somehow!  They were $19.99 each.  

$40 for two shams isn’t bad, but when you’re comparing it to the $3 price range, it was steep!  But I knew they’d look so good on my white bedding and with my great-great-grandmother’s quilt, I couldn’t resist.

We folded them in half and they were the perfect sham size.  In doing that, you don’t have to back them with anything.  Hand-sewing these would’ve taken a while and been difficult because they were so thick.

So we glued them.

Yep, we took fabric glue and attached all three sides.  And they have held up amazingly!

Now that I’ve discovered that fabric glue works for these pillows, I’m going to turn into a kilim pillow making factory!  So quick and easy.

This pillow secret has changed my life!  I know that’s dramatic, but I cannot tell you how much I love these things.

One even made an appearance in our Home Depot Patio Style Challenge.