I’m throwing in the towel…

Just for this post. lol. And not just any towel… but a souvenir beach towel that we bought in a little shop near the beach on St. Martin when we were there on a Caribbean cruise in October 2005.

For almost eight years this colourful towel had been forgotten in the back of the bedroom closet. I found it a few weeks ago, still in its original plastic wrapping, when I was doing some organizing and decided that I had to use it somehow in my French Caribbean guest room makeover.

So I gave it some thought and after passing on a few of my crazy ideas… like turning it into the headboard, to give you just one example, (only crazy because I already had a headboard idea) I decided to give it a new life as a no sew bolster pillow.

I used  two bolster pillows that I already had from a master bedroom bedding set that I’m no longer using. Together they were the perfect size for the towel.

Since my sewing machine is as ancient as my sewing skills I didn’t want to do any sewing for this project, so I went through my stash and found some thrifted velcro. I got each of these packages for 50 cents.

I’m always picking up odds and ends like this when I’m thrifting because I never know when they might come in handy, and I pretty much hate paying retail for anything.

I also had some thrifted heat n’bond stuff, but I was feeling a little lazy and thought the velcro would be easier and faster. Plus, I liked the fact that the velcro isn’t permanent.

The first thing I did was iron the towel.

Then I wrapped the towel around the pillows, which left about three inches of overlap. This was plenty to just slip in the hook and eye strips. I used 5 of the 3 1/2″ long strips horizontally across the seam of the towel.

It’s important to get the placement of the strips right the first time. If you pull it off it won’t stick again, and I had to replace one of the strips because I tried to re-position it.

I thrifted a bag of cording in a bunch of different colours a while back for $1, and I thought this green was nice. I simply tied it around each end of the towel with a bow knot.

And here’s my finished bolster pillow.

This was a super easy project, and because this pillow is only meant to be decorative I’m totally ok with using the adhesive strips. My souvenir towel is now happily out on display to be enjoyed, rather than stored away and forgotten.

I’ll be showing how the pillow looks with the guest room’s new bedding, and my headboard, when I post the reveal. My wrist was finally feeling strong enough to let me start putting my headboard together this past weekend. It isn’t quite finished yet, but I’m working on it.

Thanks so much for reading!