Knotted Fleece Pillow Tutorial

One of the small groups I am apart of at my church is a Senior Outreach group. A few times a year, we visit with senior citizens of a local assisted living and memory care facility, spend time with them, chatting, listening, and sometimes doing small arts and crafts projects. The goal is to make them feel valued, loved, and seen, and it’s one of the things I enjoy getting the opportunity to do. All but one of my grandparents have since passed, and it feels a bit bittersweet to have these interactions. In fact, the last time I was there, I was invited to karaoke night with one of the center’s most vibrant residents. That really made my day haha!

Shortly after that visit, I was wondering how I could use my own set of skills and knowledge to connect with them in a craft. The usual tasks (sewing, knitting, embroidery) felt too involved to try and drag along for an hour long time of community. No sooner had I thought that, I came across a post on Facebook shared from Laguna Rainbow Elder Care Center of some of the residents creating some knotted fleece pillows! How simple and genius it was….I knew immediately that was a perfect idea to do with the residents. I gathered up all the materials, prepped 6 pillows for the event and decided I’d write up a tutorial for anyone else wanting to do this activity. I even have a printable linked at the end for you.

For materials, I chose to use fleece. It’s no fray, easy to work with, and relatively inexpensive. For the finished pillow, you simply need two layers of fleece, some polyfill (or whatever you choose to stuff the pillows with). For prep, I recommend a rotary cutter, acrylic ruler, and cutting mat. This makes the process super quick. It can also be done with scissors, however it will take longer.

Decide on your finished dimensions, then add 8″ to each side. This will give you 4″ fringe all around. Reduce the 8″ if you want shorter fringe. I wanted a finished 12″ pillow, so I cut my squares 20″x20″. To make my process as quick as possible, I placed both my backing and topper fleece wrong sides together and cut them out at the same time using a ruler and rotary cutter. Go back and cut the corners out of the square to your fringe measurement (in my case, 4″x4″ squares). Next, cut your fringe measurement all the way around the 4 sides of the square. I wasn’t super precise with this step, but if you want to be, cut each one at 1″.

Construction is easy peasy, and the seniors really loved this process. After I cut my sets, I rolled them so that they just stayed together, which gave them a really easy starting point. To complete the pillow, you just double knot one piece from the backing and one piece from the topping together all the way around. Leave one side open by about 3-4″ so that you can stuff. Add stuffing to your liking, then tie the remaining fringe closed. Tada!!

I used the same process in the past to make double sided knotted blankets for my kiddos many years ago. The only difference is, I just used an entire 2yd cut of fleece as the starting point and didn’t add any fluff. These are really simple gifts to make for people in your life and it’s easy to customize the size to your liking.

Here’s the link to the printable instructions if you’d like them the next time you want to host a simple craft. Hope you enjoy this tutorial! I’d love to hear if you use it!