Making a Lightweight Camp Pillow from Your Shemagh Scarf

You know why they say you should never camp on the ground? Because the earth has an infinite ability to suck heat out of you. Even if the ambient temperature is just a little colder than your body temperature, you will eventually lose heat to the earth until you become hypthermic. 

This makes a camping hammock or at least a ground pad a necessity, as either will create a barrier between your warm body and the earth. More enterprising bushcrafters and survivalists might even construct cots or use leaves, grasses, or moss to insulate the ground. These are good workarounds.

In a similar vein, a camp pillow is another necessity, not just for these reasons but for comfort. Now, there are many commercially available camp pillows you can buy, some of which are stuffed and others which are designed to be inflated with air. Some also offer passive self-inflation capabilities. 

Admittedly, a camp pillow will improve your comfort in camp and help prevent a stiff neck so you can get a better night’s sleep, and you can always tell who is the serious outdoorsman in camp by how well he slept, not how well he soldiering through midnight discomfort.

But, with that being said, just as you don’t need to buy a ground pad and can improvise a solution, you can do the same with a camp pillow. In fact, you might already be wearing the very thing to make the fix. 

It’s your shemagh scarf, and this short post will show you how to do it. 

What to Use 

The main thing about converting your shemagh scarf into a camp pillow is knowing what to stuff it with. There are lots of things you can use, but some are better than others. 

Suppose you are ultralight camping and don’t have any spare clothes. If that is the case, you will need to stuff the shemagh scarf with whatever you can find on the trail. 

Arguably the best thing for this is standing dry grass. Gather up as much of this as you can, make a big wad, and use that for the stuffing. Try to avoid sedges as they are sharp and can leave uncomfortable fibers in your shemagh scarf.

Standing, dry plant fibers can also make a solid camp pillow stuffing. Milkweed down can be a good choice at the right time of year as you can gather quite a few fistfuls easily. The drawback is that it can be sticky because milkweed sap is, so it’s best to gather it from pods that have already busted open. 

If you are near water and there are any cattails around, you can use this stuff to fill your camp pillow. The cattail “punks” as they are called are actually just a whole bunch of very densely packed fibers. If you pick a few of these, you can shred them into their constituent fibers, which will expand considerably once shorn apart. Only a few of these will produce enough fiber to easily and completely fill a camp pillow.

Dry leaves gathered off the ground can also be suitable, but there are a few things to keep in mind. One is that you should never take wet leaves, as they will make your camp pillow damp. The other is that dry leaves sometimes harbor insect life and other pests, so it’s not ideal as a camp pillow stuffing. It will work if you have nothing else, though.

But perhaps the best option of all is not to gather material to stuff your shemagh scarf with, thereby making a camp pillow, but to use what you already have. The chances are you are already carrying the best camp pillow fill in your pack and didn’t even know it yet. 

Open your pack and pull out your spare layers. These can be folded up and converted into surprisingly comfortable (and warm) camp pillow stuffing. Pull out a few shirts and pairs of pants, or socks and underwear if that’s all you have, wad them up, and use them as stuffing. 

As for making an actual camp pillow, that’s also pretty easy. Lay your shemagh scarf out, and if it’s big enough (it should be) fold it over, and then again, into a quarter of its original size. Lay your stuffing in the middle, then fold the corners inward, pinch them at the top, and flip the whole thing over. There you have it, a makeshift camp pillow. 

Of course you will want to be gentle in the night or else you will spill your filling, but you should have no problem, and if you do, try making the pillow without folding the corners over on each other. 

Alternatively, if you want to, and you have a safety pin or something similar, you can clip the corners where they meet so that the pillow can’t “come apart” and shed all its stuffing. 

There you have it, all the pointers you need to make an impromptu camp pillow from a shemagh scarf, effectively step by step, and a whole bunch of different materials you can use as fill, too. 

This way, as long as you are prepared with a shemagh scarf and just a little bit of wit, it’ll be easy for you to improvise a camp pillow so you will be not only more comfortable but also drier and warmer on the trail or in camp.

Here for a New Shemagh Scarf? 

By the way, if you don’t currently carry a shemagh scarf or have one in your pack, you probably should. These are among the most versatile of all pieces of general field gear, and have a ton of different uses. But don’t just assume that statement as fact; check out our previous post Why Your Bug-Out Bag Should Contain a Shemagh Scarf.

When you’re done, check out our online catalog that contains plenty of shemagh scarves and other useful field gear, and add a few useful things to your ALICE pack or vintage military duffle bag.