Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Front Porch Pillows

I live in Daybreak. It's a planned community with the idea of older style homes and front porches. We have a lot of fun colorful houses in our neighborhood. I have mixed feelings about my front porch. I would prefer to have it open so that I can sit out on my bench and watch my kids play in the street. However, I do love that it hides the scooters that are always parked on the front porch. Anyway, I put my cute yellow bench out on the front porch and I wanted to decorate it with some pillows. I have been wanting to make something with burlap... since it's so trendy right now. So, I thought I'd do something with pillows!
I started with this pillow. I bought outdoor fabric at Joann. I followed my own tutorial to make it a slip covered pillow. Then I just cut a strip of burlap and sewed a reinforced stitch around the edge so it wouldn't fray. I sewed it into a band and made another smaller band to cinch it up in the front. Then I attached a fabric (burlap) flower that I made using my tutorial here.
Then came the fun part. I really liked the pattern in the fabric. And I wanted to make a smaller coordinating pillow out of burlap. So, here is what I did.
  • I enlarged the pattern on my copy machine. I think it was about 8x8.
  • I traced the pattern onto freezer paper.
  • I used an exacto knife and small scissors to cut out the pattern. ( I got lazy and just cut out the part that repeated.
If you would like a more detailed tutorial on freezer paper stencils, you can find one here.
  • I ironed the freezer paper stencil onto the burlap and used a sponge brush to dab acrylic paint onto the burlap. (this is where the lazy part came in. I had to take the freezer paper off and turn it 4 times to get the repeating pattern. That seemed easier than cutting it out.)
  • I heat set the paint on with the iron.
  • I sewed the pillow using the same slip covered pillow tutorial.
Here's the funny part... I was worried about a pillow form getting wet on the porch and getting moldy, so I made my pillow form by stuffing a ziploc bag with polyfil!!!
It turned out totally cute!!!
Now my front porch has a cute set of matching pillows. And I love the way they look on my yellow bench (scooters have been removed for the photo) Maybe I don't hate sewing so much after all... I just hate sewing clothes!!!
-Anisa

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I love Daybreak! The homes there are SO pretty and totally what I want my future home to look like. We took quite the tour of it when we were trying to figure out how to get to the Oquirrh Mountain temple for the open house.

Lucashell said...

Way Cute...

Lib-Dawg said...

Those are such darling pillows...I hope you take them in at night so no one steals them!!!!

Baye said...

These are beautiful. Just found your site from Princess Crafts-a-lot.

Tammy @ she wears flowers said...

I love your pillows and the freezer paper stencilled pattern was pure genius!