Pillow Party (a.k.a. Adventures in Sewing)

A while ago I stumbled upon this great outdoor fabric that had all the colors I was thinking about for our house revamp.
Over the last month I have slowly but surely been making these into accent pillows.

While I was having my pillow party, I thought I would make a monogram pillow too, in honor of the sheets that got away.  (I also had some extra fabric that I had purchased to make the backs, more on that later.  Waste not, want not.)

First I started out by making a template in my trusty Photoshop.  I don’t know what I would do without Photoshop . . . .
Since the pillow was 12″ x 18″, the whole template didn’t fit on one page — I printed out each half with some overlap and cut and taped them together.

Then came the fun/tedious part – fabric painting. I taped my template down to a piece of cardboard and centered my pillow front over it.  Since I had printed my template in black and the fabric was light-colored, I was able to see through it to trace/paint the outline.  If you were using a darker fabric, I have used a large piece of acrylic or plexi with a bare lamp bulb underneath as an improvised light table before.

I just mixed up my front door paint  (Sherwin Williams Briny) half and half with some Liquitex fabric medium.  I was a little nervous the fabric medium would dilute the color and make it kind of meh, but the teal stayed nice and vibrant.  The Liquitex directions did say to let it dry for a few days so I waited four just to be sure and then ironed the heck out of it for good measure (this was extra – the fabric medium didn’t need to be heat set but I wanted a nice flat pillow front before I started sewing.)  Full disclosure: I still haven’t washed it yet.  I’ll update if there are any disasterous results.

Then I just got to work with my trusty Kenmore sewing machine.  And then I ran out of thread . . .  And then it took me two weeks before I could buy more thread . . .  And then I photographed these pillows three different times and didn’t like how any of the pictures turned out . . . . So needless to say this one has been in the hopper for a while.  If I were to do it over again, I would shrink down the height of the monogram a little to accommodate for the curve as it wraps around the pillow.  Live and learn.

I haven’t mastered the art of the zipper yet, and as you will see below, anything on the sofa gets a lot of love from the dogs.  So right now I do envelope back style pillows so I can take them off to launder them.
I had only purchased a yard of the outdoor fabric because I wasn’t 100% sure on the colors while I was at the store.  So I didn’t have enough to do the whole back with the pretty fabric so I settled for just a stripe.  The monogram pillow has a matching teal zig-zag stitch on its back closure for just a little extra detail.

Sophie and Shenanigan have gotten the most use out of the pillows so far . . .
While we were at Winslow’s Home last Friday, I picked up Nellie’s Dryer Balls.  For a quick dog hair removal, I just throw the whole pillow in the dryer with the dryer balls and it gets the dog hair cleaned off and the pillows plumped back up for King Shenanigan.  Those dogs are SPOILED!  But we love them so . . .

In related pillow news, I was over at my mom’s house and saw that the ruffle pillow I slaved over is displayed with honor.  That makes me happy.
(Are we seeing where I learned to love the color blue?  And Diet Coke?  Not the Diet Coke?  Well blue at least . . .)