A here with more on the pillow front! I've been inspired by fabric printing/painting for a while now but hadn't done anything with it. Then I found a Halloween inspired pillow on Etsy that pushed me over the edge. I bought up some canvas-like fabric immediately without any idea how I was going to make it work and ended up with one of my favorite personal creations! My methods were a bit trial and error, but by the end, the materials list for these pillows included:
- 1 yard fabric (I chose a canvas-like material with a linen/natural look)
- Ruler
- Fabric pencil
- Scissors
- Die cuts (I made mine on my Slice, but Cricut cuts or stencils would work too)
- Cardstock
- A projector/tracer
- Soft lead pencil
- Black craft paint
- Fabric medium (Martha Stewart has an easy-to-use one)
- Paint brushes
- Matching thread
- Sewing machine
Once I had my pieces cut out, I started sketching what I wanted the design to look like on the front of the pillows. I have a Slice electronic cutter and browsed my cartridges to see what options I had. After making some difficult choices (I only had enough fabric to make two pillows, decisions, decisions) I cut my designs out of cardstock.
As you can see, my cutter only cuts up to 4" shapes, kinda small for a 20" pillow. To make the images bigger, I used a tracer (projector) from my office to blow the images up on our apartment wall. I taped the fabric to the wall and traced the images with a soft leaded pencil. If you don't have access to a projector, you could take your die cuts to a copy shop and have them blow up the images for you, then trace around the edges onto the fabric. For that matter, if you don't have a die cutter, you could print images off of your computer and cut them out or draw them yourself! I'm not very skilled in the drawing department, so I cheat.
Once I had the large images traced onto the fabric, I laid out the smaller die cuts and traced around them. Luckily, I didn't have to project every letter of OCTOBER or SPOOKY. If so, I would have spent all night camped out in the hallway!
To mix up the paint I used one part Fabric Medium to two parts craft paint. I mixed up quite a bit so that the consistency would remain the same for the entire image. Some people would have chosen to use stencils at this point, but I'm stubborn. I wasn't able to make stencils of the large images because all my cardstock is too small, and I didn't want the letters to have a different look from the large images. Instead, I decided it would be a great idea to paint the whole thing by hand. Warning, do not do this unless you are a very patient person who loves the feeling of accomplishing detail work! By the time I was done, even I thought I was crazy! Luckily J has a large collection of different sized brushes and I was able to do the details without pulling out too much of my hair.
Yay! The hard part was done! After letting both images dry for nearly 24 hours, I heat-set them with an iron by ironing them on the backside with steamless medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes. Then I assembled my pillows in the same way as the Batty Pillow and voila, new pillow covers! The backs look something like this:
The fronts, however, are my favorite!
I'd love to see more design ideas, so please share your stuff below!
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