A Pillow-Makin FOOL

I made five more pillows for my guest bed this weekend, and I'll show you how I did them.

I made my first one from a skirt I got at Goodwill for a mere $2. See? The before:

And the after:


Here's how I did it:That picture is pretty little, and the text might be hard to read, so feel free to ask questions in the comments and I can answer there.

The skirt material was somewhat sheer, so I reinforced it by backing it up with plain white fabric cut to size. That part wasn't quite clear from my picture run-through up there. If I hadn't done that, you'd be able to see the lumpy stuffing inside, and that would be unattractive.

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Okay, this is my FAVORITE pillow. I have to admit, I modeled it after this one that I saw on Etsy. I knew I had to make my own version after I saw it, and luckily I had a ton of black and white fabrics left over from my latest quilt, so it was free to do.

Here is my little birdie:

And here is how I created this pillow:


For the sewers out there, let me talk about the free-motion foot - it's AWESOME. You can literally sew in any direction you want because you're not pushing the fabric through using the feed dogs. You can also control the length of the stitch, so they can be really tiny or super long. It takes a LOT of practice and patience to stitch well with the free motion foot, but it's TOTALLY worth it. I am still learning, so my stitches are a little messy. If you use the regular foot, you don't have as much control over such small turns and points, so this worked well for me.
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Pillow #3 - I had lots of left-over fabric from my vanity bench, so I plopped a square of it in the middle of this guy and sewed around the edges. Woops, it's a little messy in the bottom right corner:


I LOVE the look of the raw edges. ________________________________________________________

Pillow #4. I wanted to make my own design for one.

I picked up a fabric marker from Michael's for $3, and used black and white fabric I already owned to create the pillow. First I sewed a black edge around a plain white square, essentially framing a white fabric canvas. And since I love doodling and drawing swirlies, I filled the inside border with them.
I'll admit, this took about 2 hours to draw, but it was so much fun and I think it turned out pretty good. The fabric marker supposedly won't bleed or fade, super important.


And you can see my 5th pillow in the middle of the back row here, all black fabric using white stitching to create a contrast. Although they are all very different, I think they tie in because they're black/white/gray.


I am not a perfecter sewer, nor would I want to be. I love the look of raw edges, I love that my lines aren't perfect, I like that these pillows have lots of imperfections, little errors. :) I had sooo. much. fun sewing this weekend. It reminded me that I need to do it way more often.


I also have a fix for my curtain problem, so I should be posting about that soon. Thank goodness!


And once more, I'll be linkin' up!