Pretty Summer Pillows

I have been busy in the sewing room making some pretty new pillows to share!  The first one is a butterfly hand-painted on cream linen.  I first saw this pillow two years ago on etsy.  As soon as I saw it, I put it on my wish list because I knew it would be perfect for the den.  Eventually I realized I was never going to pay $40 for a pillow and then it became unavailable so I was forced to take action.  Fortunately I had saved a picture of the pillow, so I decided to make my own!  Here’s the inspiration:

Gorgeous, no?  I scaled up the image to fit my pillow size and printed out just the butterfly part.  I bought some cream linen and traced the design on to the fabric.  I used acrylic paint even though fabric paint would be have been better, but I didn’t have any.  I don’t intend to wash it, so the acrylic should be fine for my purposes.  It only took me a couple of hours to paint it and then another half hour to sew it into a pillow!

It looks just like the picture, right?  Except for all that postmark-y stuff in the background.

It’s currently living it up on the den couch with all its pillow pals. :)  Yay!  And all it cost me was the price of the linen which was around $6 or so.  :)  Score!

In other pillow making news, I made a couple of doily covered pillows for my sister-in-law, Laura last week.  While they were waiting to be gift-wrapped, I had to sneak a photo op of them in the cream wingback chairs. :)  They looked right at home next to the turquoise dresser:

This was another easy pillow project.  The doilies were passed down to Laura from her grandmother so we decided to reuse them on a pillow.  I just arranged them on a square of turquoise cotton and stitched them on.  I used a machine stitch in the center down the straight lines and then hand stitched all the way around the scalloped edge to keep them from lifting.  Then I sewed an envelope closure in the back and stuck a pillow form inside. 

There you have it:  a couple of do-it-yourself pillows that look like you bought them on etsy!  :)