Shoulder Pain From Knitting? Rest Your Arms on a Pillow
Shoulders and elbows aching after an hour of knitting or crochet? Crafters rest their arms on a secondhand nursing pillow, and say who it won't help.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
A knitter in r/knitting saw an ad in April 2026 for a made-to-order "knitting pillow", clicked on it, and realised it looked exactly like a nursing pillow. So they dug their old one out of storage. It worked: less hunching, and their shoulders and arms had something to rest on.
The first reply had been doing the same with a secondhand one, bought for about a tenth of what the hobby versions are advertised at. That's the whole trick. The pillow crafters keep recommending for sore shoulders is a Boppy, the baby-feeding pillow, and the threads say to find one secondhand.
Why does a pillow help?
A nursing pillow is a fat crescent that wraps round your waist. Sit upright with it on and your elbows sink into it and your forearms rest along the top. The work comes up to your hands, so your shoulders stop holding your arms in the air. One knitter rests their elbows in it and says it saves them from hunching over the work.
A crocheter with arthritis and carpal tunnel described it from the arm's end.
It helps take some weight off of my wrist and I can manipulate it to take pressure off my elbow joint. It basically allows my whole arm to rest.
u/VengefulFairy, in r/crochet
The chair does half the job. Another knitter says the pillow works for them sitting very upright on a firm seat with back support, because leaning back feels comfortable at first but makes the arms and wrists work harder. A Boppy owner finds it works best in a chair with a rigid back, not the couch.
One reader of Carson Demers's Knitting Comfortably, an ergonomics book for knitters, says he suggests a pillow for the same reason: to keep the arms and elbows as neutral as possible.
The baby pillow or the gaming pillow?
Ask about a Boppy pillow for knitting and the first answer is that Boppy is a brand name and any nursing pillow does. A cheap generic one was fine for a knitter who also games on it, and one reply uses IKEA's, which is firmer.
Boppy has caught on, too: its own site now sells the nursing pillow as a knitting and crochet pillow that supports your forearms. A taller knitter went for the taller Boppy Luxe.
A gaming pillow is the same idea, bigger, with a clip that closes it at the back. The Valari, which now sells under the name Crafteaze, is the one the threads name. One owner says it keeps everything aligned and there's much less strain on their upper body.
The clip is the real difference. A crocheter who got a Valari as a birthday present hated the Boppy, even for breastfeeding, because it was always slipping around. Every reach for a drink meant readjusting it, and it's worse with a bit of a tummy.
Valari's two editions have the same pillow under different covers. A cheaper clipped option is the My Breast Friend nursing pillow, which also closes round the back, and two replies in that thread say to find one secondhand.
An owner of both prefers the Boppy. The Valari is bigger round, with more room for the elbows, but the Boppy is fluffier, sits higher and snugger, and keeps the wrists and elbows up. They wouldn't splurge on the Valari again.
Who it won't help
Wrists, mostly. A Crafteaze owner says it helps with shoulder, back and elbow pain, not really wrist pain, and that a good hook did more for their wrists. The crocheter quoted above felt some weight come off the wrist, so call it a shoulders-and-elbows fix, with the wrist a maybe.
Not everyone's elbows get the support, though. The crocheter who'd asked about the Valari had tried a nursing pillow for crochet and hated it. A reply suggests a cheap inflatable lap desk to try the idea before paying for the pricier pillow.
If your chair already has armrests, one Boppy owner says the pillow is the same thing.
Two of these threads were started by people who later learned the pain had another cause. One came back to say that pain, tingling or numbness that outlasts the ergonomic fixes and a break from the needles is a reason to keep seeking answers. A reply in the other thread says see a physical therapist and bring your knitting, because how much support you need depends on your body and what posture suits it.
Where to get one
Secondhand, say the threads. The person who started a 2017 thread works at a kids' resale shop, sells them for next to nothing and says they're always cheap on Facebook swaps and Craigslist. Others name Goodwill, consignment shops and buy-nothing groups, where they go cheap or free. The pillows sold to crafters as crochet pillows cost several times that, and so do new gaming pillows, which is the gap the storage knitter spotted.
If the print bothers you, there are cover options that don't scream baby.
Start with a pillow you already own. One knitter with sore hands puts a large pillow on their lap to keep everything aligned, and another tucks one under the arm that hurts, for upper-arm pain. An evening of that tells you whether your shoulders drop when your elbows have somewhere to go. Then find a Boppy or any nursing pillow secondhand, and spend more on the clipped kind only if the plain one slides about on you or your elbows want more room.
