How to Make an Instagram Photo Pillow

I’ve carried a camera with me just about everywhere for most of my life. At first was one of those long 1990s 110 cameras that sort of looked like hand held tape recorders. Then my dad gave me his 35mm and my love for photography grew. After that I got a Polaroid and became addicted to being able to see the photo I’d taken right away. Well, almost right away. I was one of those impatient people who would shake and wave the photo until the image appeared a mere 90 seconds later. My first digital camera solved my anxious shaking problem because now, I could see the photo right away. The only bummer was that my digital camera was an SLR and it was heavy and I was always telling people to hold on just a second while I adjusted the light settings. Then came the iPhone and I finally met my camera soulmate. Even if I didn’t feel like lugging around my heavy DSLR with me, I always had my phone with me. My iPhone solved all my photo-obsession problems because it allowed me to not only take high quality crisp photographs but also edit them immediately with an app like Instagram and make them look like Polaroids or blur the background for a SLRish effect.

A few weeks ago I was looking through all my Instagram photos and feeling a bit sad that they only existed on my phone. I thought about printing them out and putting them in a photo album. BUT how often do we sit down at the dining room table and pour over photo albums for hours? I wanted to create something with my photos that I could look at everyday. Recently, I bought a new couch that’s quite a bit bigger than my old one. I had a few pillows for it but they were plain and boring. I married my need to turn my Instagram photos into functional art and my desire to spruce up my new couch and I came up with this Instagram photo pillow DIY project. You don’t have to use Instagram photos. In fact, you can scan in photos of your family through the years and make an awesome present for your parents or another family member. I was thinking about how cool it would be to use photos of a couple and then give it to them for a wedding or anniversary gift. Now that I made this one, my mind is swimming with ideas for future pillows featuring themed photograph. The satisfaction isn’t as instantaneous a watching a Polaroid photo develop before your eyes but unlike my Polaroid pictures that sit a rarely viewed photo album, I look at this pillow everyday.

-Nicole S.

Head over to Bernina’s We All Sew blog for the full tutorial.