Making a nursing pillow at home is a straightforward sewing project that takes a few hours and gives you full control over the shape, firmness, and fabric. You need about a yard of fabric, stuffing material, and basic sewing skills. The process comes down to cutting a U-shaped pattern, sewing the pieces together, stuffing the pillow, and optionally adding a removable cover with a zipper for easy washing.
What You Need Before You Start
Gather these materials before cutting anything:
- Pillow fabric: About 1 yard of sturdy cotton or cotton blend for the inner pillow
- Cover fabric (optional): Another yard of soft, washable fabric like flannel, minky, or jersey knit
- Stuffing: Polyester fiberfill, buckwheat hulls, or shredded memory foam (more on choosing below)
- A zipper: 14 to 18 inches long, if you’re making a removable cover
- Sewing essentials: Pins, scissors, a sewing machine, needle, and thread
- Pattern or template: You can trace an existing nursing pillow, print a free pattern, or draw your own U-shape on newspaper or butcher paper
For the template, the overall shape is a wide horseshoe or U that wraps around your torso. A typical nursing pillow measures roughly 20 inches across and about 16 inches from front to back, with an opening of around 10 to 12 inches wide so it fits snugly around your midsection. Trace it onto cardboard or paper so you can cut consistently.
Choosing Your Filling
The filling you pick determines how the pillow feels, how long it holds its shape, and how you’ll clean it.
Polyester fiberfill is the cheapest and most common option. It’s lightweight, easy to stuff, and makes the pillow machine washable. The downside is that it traps body heat (not great for warm-weather nursing sessions) and tends to clump over time, leaving you with a lumpy, flat pillow after a few months of daily use. If you go this route, stuff it firmly, because it will compress.
Buckwheat hulls offer the firmest support of any filling. They mold to shape and stay put, which is helpful for keeping a baby at a consistent height. They also promote airflow, so the pillow stays cool. The tradeoffs: buckwheat hulls are heavy (a standard-sized pillow filled with them can weigh around 8 pounds), and they make a rustling sound when you shift position. You also can’t toss a buckwheat-filled pillow in the washing machine. You’d need to empty the hulls, wash only the cover, and refill.
Shredded memory foam splits the difference. It’s more supportive than fiberfill and less heavy than buckwheat, and you can adjust the firmness by adding or removing foam pieces. Cleaning is trickier than fiberfill. Memory foam absorbs a lot of water and takes a long time to dry. If you wash it, run extra spin cycles and dry it with a fan or in a dryer on a no-heat tumble setting. Some people find it never fully air-dries without help.
Cutting the Fabric
Fold your pillow fabric in half so you’re cutting through two layers at once. Place your U-shaped template on the fabric with the center line of the template along the fold. Cut around the template through both layers. When you unfold the piece, you’ll have one complete U-shaped panel. Repeat this process to get a second panel, giving you a front and back for the pillow.
If you’re making a removable cover, cut two more U-shaped pieces from your cover fabric using the same method but adding about half an inch of extra space all around. The cover needs to be slightly larger than the inner pillow so you can slide the pillow in and out.
Sewing the Inner Pillow
Place the two pillow panels together with the “right” sides (the sides you want facing outward) touching each other. Pin along the entire edge of the U-shape. Sew a seam about half an inch from the edge all the way around, but leave a gap of about 4 to 5 inches along one of the straight inner edges. This opening is where you’ll push the stuffing in.
Clip small notches into the seam allowance along the curves before turning the pillow right-side out. This prevents the fabric from bunching and gives you smoother curves. Turn the whole thing through the opening so the seams are now hidden inside.
Now stuff the pillow. Push filling in through the opening in handfuls, working it into the far corners and curves first. Keep going until the pillow feels firm and supportive. Remember, fiberfill compresses with use, so overstuff slightly if that’s your filling. Once you’re satisfied with the firmness, fold the raw edges of the opening inward and hand-stitch it closed with a needle and thread using a ladder stitch. Getting a fully stuffed pillow under a sewing machine is awkward, so hand-stitching this last seam is much easier.
Adding a Removable Zippered Cover
A removable cover is worth the extra effort. Nursing pillows get spit-up, milk, and drool on them constantly, and being able to unzip a cover and throw it in the wash makes life significantly easier.
Take your two cover fabric panels and place them right sides together, just like the inner pillow. Pin and sew around the entire U-shape, but this time leave a longer opening along the inner edge, long enough for your zipper (14 to 18 inches). Press the seam allowance along this opening so the raw edges fold neatly inward.
Pin the zipper into the opening with the zipper teeth facing the right side of the fabric. Stitch as close to the zipper teeth as you can on both sides, starting from one end and working your way to the other. Test the zipper before inserting the pillow. It should open wide enough to slide the stuffed inner pillow through without forcing it. If the opening feels tight, use a longer zipper or extend the opening slightly.
Getting the Height and Firmness Right
The whole point of a nursing pillow is to bring the baby up to breast height so you’re not hunching over. If the pillow is too flat, you’ll end up rounding your shoulders and straining your back. If it’s too tall, the baby’s head will be too high for a comfortable latch.
A good test: sit in the chair or spot where you usually nurse, wrap the pillow around your waist, and place a similarly weighted object (like a bag of rice or flour) on top. Your forearms should rest comfortably on the pillow without your shoulders shrugging up. Most people find that a pillow about 5 to 6 inches thick works well, but your body proportions and chair height matter. This is one of the biggest advantages of making your own: you can add or remove filling until the height is exactly right for you, rather than settling for a store-bought pillow that’s too thin or too thick.
If you used buckwheat hulls or shredded foam, you can adjust firmness after the fact by opening a seam, adding or removing filling, and re-stitching. With fiberfill, you can do the same, but plan to top it off every few weeks as the filling compresses.
Washing and Maintenance
How you clean the pillow depends entirely on the filling. A fiberfill pillow can go in the washing machine on a gentle cycle with mild detergent. Toss a couple of old towels in to balance the load. Dry it on low heat, and throw in a couple of tennis balls to keep the filling from clumping. Laying it in direct sunlight for a few hours after washing helps kill bacteria.
Memory foam and buckwheat hulls cannot go in a standard wash cycle the same way. For shredded memory foam, either spot-clean the outer cover or hand-wash the pillow in a bathtub, squeeze out as much water as you can, and dry it under a fan. Memory foam holds water like a sponge. Without active airflow, it may never fully dry and could develop mold. For buckwheat hulls, remove the hulls entirely, wash only the fabric shell, let it dry completely, and pour the hulls back in.
This is why a removable zippered cover pays for itself many times over. You wash the cover in the machine regularly and only deep-clean the inner pillow occasionally.
A Safety Note for Sleep
Nursing pillows are designed for supervised feeding sessions, not for infant sleep. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends keeping all pillows, pillow-like objects, and soft bedding out of a baby’s sleep area. Soft objects can obstruct a baby’s nose and mouth, and airway obstruction from soft bedding is the most common cause of accidental infant suffocation. Bed sharing with pillows or blankets present increases the risk of sleep-related infant death by two to five times compared to baseline. Once the feeding session is over, move the baby to a firm, flat sleep surface with nothing else in it.