Ruffled Rosette Pillow Tutorial {from a t-shirt}

You poor souls.
Why on earth do you even put up with me?
On Monday, yes Monday, I said I would post this little tutorial the next day.
Well, 4 days later here I am.

I am nothing, if not completely and totally unreliable.  
What can I say, It’s spring break week here. kids. enough said.

So on with my little pillow tutorial.

If you didn’t see this post on the swirled ruffle pillow, you might want to start there. It will give you the steps to make the actual pillow and how to make your ruffles.

This post will show you how to use your ruffles to make a completely different looking pillow. Ok, maybe not completely, it still is ruffled and made from a t-shirt. Movin’ on……


Here she is.
I {heart} her.
Just lovely.

You will start off by making your pillow cover and ruffles just like in this post, but without stitching any ruffles on it. Go ahead and sew the opening shut and you are ready to make some rosettes to place on your pillow.

I made 4 big rosettes and 2 smaller ones. The larger ones take a couple strips of ruffle and the smaller ones only take one. So about 10 should do it. Keep in mind it will depend on the size of your pillow. Mine is only a 14” pillow so if yours is bigger, you might need more to make it look balanced.

For each rosette you will need a circle of felt or fleece cut into about a 3” circle. It doesn’t need to be exact {or perfect} it will be hidden and any extra will be cut off.  I used my high temp glue gun. I like the high temp because it adheres better and faster, but be careful or you might not have any finger prints left when you are done {not that I would know}.

First I took each strip of ruffle and rounded off the corners at each end so it would have a softer look.

Take your first ruffle and fold it in half lengthwise with the stitching on one side, creating a V shape with the ruffle. The stitching side is the part you will be gluing  down.

You will start with a  dot of hot glue in the middle of your felt piece.

Grab the end of your first ruffle and kind of swirl it around the end to make the center of your rosette. I like to put my finger through the middle of the ruffle {the V part} and push the stitching part onto the glue.

Once the center is adhered, make another short line of glue around the center part in the direction of your ruffle. {did that make any sense at all?}
You will just keep going around in a circle with your glue and your ruffle, pushing it into the glue to adhere it.  {this is way easier to do than to explain….promise}.

Here she is after one ruffle has been added. If this were one of the small rosettes I needed, I would take my scissors and cut around the bottom of the felt to remove any extra that wasn’t glued down and I would be finished.

BUT, this is one of my big rosettes, so I am going to add one more ruffle to make it even bigger. I just start adding it where I left off with the other one.


Here she is all finished and ready to apply to my pillow. 
If there is still any bit of felt on the back side that hasn’t been glued, now would be the time to cut any of that extra off so you won’t be able to see it on the pillow.

To adhere the rosettes to your pillow, simply lay them out in  a design to your liking and hot glue each one to the pillow. Make sure you get plenty of glue around the edges so they don’t peel up. Nothin’ worse than peeling rosettes on your pillow.

I actually thought this pillow was a lot easier to make than the other one. I love making the rosettes. You could use them in lots of different ways.

Thanks for puttin’ up with me.
I am so thankful for each of you that comes to visit and leave comments.
You really do make my day!

Have a beautiful weekend!

This post is linked to: Weekend Wrap-up Party, Dittle Dattle, Mad Skills, Sew cute Tuesday, Take a look Tuesday , The Lettered Cottage