Sew Your Own Throw Pillow With Decorative Piping

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Throw pillows are great décor accents just about anywhere! Recently, we've shared how to make lumbar pillows, neckroll pillows and envelope-style pillows. Now, we're going to show you how to step up the style of your pillows with decorative piping. Adding a premade decorative piping to the edge of your pillow will give it a professional, polished look. In fact, your pillow will look so stylish that people will think it came from a chic boutique!
Video Chapters:
  • Selecting Fabric — 0:20 min.
  • Measuring & Patterning — 1:07 min.
  • Installing Piping — 2:54 min.
  • Sewing Plates — 5:19 min.
  • Finishing With Pillow Form — 10:01 min.
  • Materials List — 14:22 min.
Materials List:
  • Home décor fabric of choice
  • Sunbrella® Decorative Piping Trim 1/4" Vellum (#365198)
  • Seamstick 3/8" Basting Tape for Canvas (50 yds.) (#129)
  • Tex 70 (V-69) Silver UV Bonded Polyester Thread 4 oz. (1,350 yds.) (#106138)
  • Indoor/Outdoor Rectangle Pillow Insert 12" x 20" (#123609)
  • Indoor/Outdoor Square Pillow Insert 24" x 24" (#122151)
Tools List:
  • Sailrite® Ultrafeed® LS Walking Foot Sewing Machine (110V) (#311502)
  • Gingher® 8" Scissors Right Handed (#19104)
  • Seam Ripper Deluxe (#18104)
  • Left Zipper Foot for Ultrafeed® LS & Leatherwork® (#905)
  • Pencil, Yardstick

Sunbrella® Decorative Piping

In the video, we used a Sunbrella® Decorative Piping that coordinated nicely with our fabric. Whether you decide to use a larger, premade piping like this, or to make your own piping, the process is the same. When sewing piping, you’ll want to have a welting/cording foot on your sewing machine. The Sailrite® Ultrafeed® Sewing Machines have a built-in cording tunnel on their standard feet.

We have thousands of beautiful upholstery fabrics that are perfect for sewing pillows. Once you've found your fabric of choice, browse our selection of decorative piping to find a piping color that coordinates with your fabric. If you don't want piping on your pillow, we also have several pillow DIYs that do not use piping. Just type "pillow" into the search bar on our website and click the "DIY Projects" tab to explore our entire collection of pillow how-tos.

For a plump pillow, we like to pattern the fabric the exact size of the pillow form. This makes the pillow form just slightly oversized for the fabric so it fits really snugly. You can add a seam allowance, too, if you prefer. Watch our how-to video and get started on your pillow project!

Don’t forget, if you need help calculating fabric yardage for your pillow project, you can use our Fabric Calculator to figure out exactly how much fabric you’ll need. It even shows you a rendering of how to cut the panels!

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