Because I have a problem.

But seriously you guys. It's not like I'm looking for napkins and place mats to turn into pillows - it's that I see potential in even the lowliest of dining accessories!

Yeah, okay.

Lou and I popped into Anthropologie the other day, and there were two pink-and-white-striped pillows with little blue fringe that I just waned to gobble up. On clearance, with an extra 20% off, they were $40 each.

So. Pretty.

But I wandered on, rummaging deep into the clearance bins, and found some fantastic knit (?) place mats, with berry, green, yellow and navy - so actually perfect for Lou's room.  With the extra 20% off, $3.60 each. So I took home two. What $40 pillows?

(Just kidding pillows! I'm still thinking about you. I just don't have the space right now. It's not you. It's me).

...Anyway...I had these Ikea pillows and black and white covers at home. I'd picked them up on clearance at for about $4 each a few weeks ago.

These are not the same type of place mats we talked about here - no lining to cut open and stuff a pillow inside. My plan was to use these pillow covers, with their existing zippers and all, by bonding the place mats to the cover. Ideally, the place mat would have been the exact same size as the pillow cover.

It wasn't. But that little bit extra width-wise, wasn't a big deal. I took a pair of cuticle scissors (I don't have a seam ripper) and unhemmed the bottom edge.

That unhemming netted me about an inch of extra material. Plenty. Then I considered no-sew tape, actual sewing, and hot glue for bonding the place mats. Hot glue won.

I went with hot glue because it seemed easy, because I didn't care about preserving the original pillow case, and because I was curious how it would hold up.

A tutorial isn't really necessary here, but I carefully lined up the edges of my place mat to the less-appealing side of the existing pillow cover and drew a thin bead of glue around the perimeter. When I got to the edge I had unhemmed, I rehemmed it, along the zipper edge of the pillow. I figured the zipper edge was the least visible.

Er, so basically this post is: Hot glue a place mat onto an existing pillow cover. If your place mat is too small, unhem it (or use ribbon or trim to fill them out).

But, I really like the way it turned it out. And the other pillows? I made those from a package of Nicole Miler napkins, (on clearance at Marshall's for $12) using the same method I shared before. I love them.

What about the back of the pillow? I even like how it turned out! The pink fringe from the place mat is cute peeking out:

So here's a sneak peek of the pillows on Lou's bed. The blue and navy Ikat are the free trade covers I mentioned in our Lou's Room To Do post, and the floral is a lovely little gem I borrowed from my mom.

What do you think? Are you more of a place mat pillow person or a napkin pillow person? Okay, I'll try to cool it on the pillow posts for a while. Thanks for stopping by!