How to make a travel pillow

This one I have done long time ago but I couldnt post it because it has been a gift for my godchild Sonja.

She loves to travel a lot with bus, car, train. She never travels without her own pillow.

When traveling she runs with her suitcase in one hand, her bag in her other hand and her pillow under her arm. When I saw this for the first time I thought about how to make it easier for her.

We bought a new pillow for her. Did she choose a small one? NOPE, it has to be a big one LOL

 Case 1

And this is how I made it for her:

Material:

1 Pillow

2 different fabrics ( pillow 1 yard flannel, bag 1 yard cord fabric)

1 Zipper

3 x Clip buckles

2 different ribbons (pillow 40 inches, bag 2x 40 inches)

1 cord 40 inches

2 cord stops

I have chosen a nice flannel with cameras for the pillow.Sonja is an amazing photographer and what better motive I could have bought for her?

First cut the fabric for the pillow,sew the zipper on one of the larger side. (dont buy a zipper about the whole lenghts of the pillow because of the ribbons with the clip buckles.

Then cut the 40 inch ribbon in half.and put the clip buckle on one of it.

Case 7

Lay this ribbon in half like on the picture above and pin it with a needle 4-5 inches from the end of this side. When sewing this side, sew 3-4 time forward and back over the ribbon.

Close both shorter sides of the pillow. ( Open your zipper after this a little. Had a real fight to turn my pillow because I couldnt opened the zipper LOL )

On the last side put the second ribbon (dont fold it this time !!! ) in the the same distance as you did with the first ribbon and close this side.

Case 8

On the picture above you see the pillow with the ribbons, one folded, the other not. Put the other part of your clip buckle on it. Fold the end of this ribbon 3 or 4 times and sew it together. Otherwise your clip buckle will slip and will get lost.

Case 2

your pillow will look like this, when you attach it to a car seat or a bus seat 🙂

It isnt very hygienic to run with your pillow outdoors:Plus Sonja chose a very large pillow. Not so perfect when you will take it on your journey.

Birgid, the dressmaker of my sewing course made the proposal to sew a bag for this pillow. Not for the whole lenghts of the pillow but half of it. So I made the bag big enough to fold the pillow.

AND SHE WAS RIGHT!!!

Here comes the bag for your pillow:

Case9

Cut the fabric:  2/3 the length of your pillow and add on each side of the bag 4 inch more then the width of your pillow.

Bag 1

Bag 2

Bag 3

Bag 4

Put the cord stops on your cord.

Fold your pillow and take it into your bag 🙂

Case 5

If I would do it again I would take a much larger ribbon below. This bag cant be attach directly to your suitcase because the ribbon is to short.

I also would chose a stronger ribbon for the bag and bigger clip buckles.

This is how it looks like.

But it will work this way too 🙂

Case 6

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.