Happy New Year, everyone! As a Brazilian, my year is only really starting now — after Carnaval, of course.

I took a few months off from blogging to rest, but I definitely didn’t stop creating. Lately I’ve been focusing on making more crochet pieces for myself instead of gifts, and this project had been sitting on my “to crochet” list for quite a while.

I took inspiration from a picture I found on Pinterest and worked from there without following a specific pattern. If you’d like to try making one yourself, here is the reference piece and the original pattern they have available for sale.

I won’t attempt to teach how to recreate this exact pillow here, since my version was very much a freestyle, trial-and-error process — and the result is definitely not perfect. What I do want to share are some process photos, the final result, and the fact that I had a lot of fun making it. I’d absolutely recommend this kind of project: it’s cute, functional, and not too difficult.

For the stuffing, I used some raw cotton I already had lying around, along with some generic pillow filling. I made sure to stuff it quite firmly so it would stay fluffy and highlight the star shape better.

Getting the shape right can be a bit tricky. As the piece grows, it tends to get a little wonky, and making the star “legs” stay sharp and pointy is harder than it looks. In the end, the points came out more rounded than I originally intended — but that seems to be more of a limitation of the medium than a design choice.

Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out. It looks adorable and feels great to use!