My two girls love to lounge around the house reading books, on the iPad or watching movies; therefore these pillow beds are perfect lounging beds and as an added bonus keep the lounges free for the adults! Pillow beds are also great for sleepovers, nap times and even as a camping bed. Of course I didn’t come up with this fabulous idea; the wonderful posts on Pinterest are my source of inspiration. I honestly don’t know how I existed before Pinterest!!

What you need

• 4 metres poly cotton fabric (I used 2 metres each of different fabric patterns for the front and back)
• 4 pillows (you can use old pillows you already have or buy medium to firm cheap pillows – don’t buy expensive ones)
• sewing machine with matching thread
• Ruler and pen, pencil or fabric chalk
• Fabric pins

First things first, measure out your pillow bed. A standard pillow case is usually 46 cm x 72 cm, so I used that as the basis of my pattern and added in a 2 cm border for sewing.

Outline and cutting to size

On my 2 metre fabric length for the front of the pillow bed, I measured and ruled out 188 cm length by a 87 cm width.

• 188 cm = 46 cm x 4 pillows plus 2 cm border at the bottom and 2 cm border at the top
• 87 cm = 72 cm + 15 cm. As pillows have a fold over, I added on an extra 15 cm section to fold over on the top section.

I’ve attached a PDF version of my pattern, if you would like to use mine.

Pillow bed pattern_The Mummy Track

It’s also a good idea to draw the pillow outline on the back of the fabric. Repeat this process for the back section, but remove the fold over fabric, therefore measure 188 cm by 76 cm.

Make a double fold over for a hem and pin along one length edge for both the front and back fabric sections where your pillow case opening will be.

Sewing

Sew a straight stitch along the folded hems down the lengths of the front and back fabric sections.

Line up both font and back panels with the patterned fabric on the inside and pin around the outside except for the hemmed opening side. Also fold over the pillow fold over and pin it down. I also ironed the fabric at this stage to make sure that the two pieces of fabric were perfectly aligned. Sew along the outside with a straight stitch.

As these pillow beds will most probably be jumped on and generally abused and therefore washed regularly, I also sewed a zig zag stitch to stop the fabric from fraying. If you have a fancy over-locker machine, you can use that instead.

Turn the fabric inside out, so that the fabric pattern is showing. Pin along the three lined pillow sections. Sew along the sections in straight stitch.

Your pillow bed is now ready for stuffing with pillows! This is a simple project as it involves straight sewing and no complicated steps. It took me a couple of hours to complete one pillow bed.