New House Project: Painted Throw Pillows

Ok, folks. Here it is - project #2 of about 1, 467. Only a few of them are blog-worthy (in my opinion), and clearly it takes me a loooonnnggg time to get things pulled together to put on here. Bear with me. 

We are almost exactly at our 1-year anniversary of walking through this house for the first time. We had seen it online for several months, always thinking it had promise, but was too pricey. We watched the price drop and drop and drop and then our realtor twisted our arm into looking at it. I walked through it pretty quickly with my mom on a Thursday, put an offer on it before Erik had even seen it, threw a Cinco de Mayo party (the last one at 79th Terrace!) and the rest, as they say, is history. 

As you will see through posts to come, this house had a lot of promise, and had a lot of nice things already done to it, but needed A LOT of attention. Cleaning attention, painting attention, and some un-sexy things, like roof / plumbing / electrical attention. Though we were able to purchase the house for a good price, it still required lots of our savings to get it into a state that I would consider live-able, or rather, happily live-able. I expect to be here a long time, but for now, budget is KEY.

Here is an idea of what we started with: kind of french country style throughout. You can't see that the rest of the room is piled with boxes.

And this was after we took possession and I was wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. The upper cabinets and light fixture came down fast, and the walls, ceiling and floors were tidied up.

Here is what fills the window seat today. A custom seat cushion hasn't been in the budget yet. It is a totally strange size, but I found the four navy seat cushions through one of those daily sale sites, maybe Joss and Main?, and they do the trick for now.

The throw pillows? Well, yes, I painted them!

I have a serious problem making decisions when it comes to fabric. Well, and most other non-important things, but that is a story for another time. I Googled and searched and made trips to fabric stores and I just couldn't commit. I wanted to keep things kind of bright and in primary colors to go with the white sofa and pillows I already had in this room (see old house here).

I was willing to spend some money on the fabric for these pillows, but I realized I would need quite a few pillows and quite a bit of fabric. I can sew a decent pillow cover, but I didn't want to risk my "skills" on really nice fabric, and then I thought they should probably be removable and would need a zipper, which quickly surpassed my "skills". A seamstress was going to add a lot of $$ to the budget, so I just scrapped the plan. In one of my middle-of-the-night-brilliant-ideas (I have a lot of those), I decided I could probably just paint the pillows?

I know, I have unrealistic confidence in my DIY abilities. I had used the freezer paper - fabric paint stencil technique before with good results (see t-shirt here), so I got to planning! I found a seller on Etsy (By Judianne) who would take custom orders and I had her make me 6 pillow covers in white cotton duck so they would be washable. I searched around for good fabric paint colors, which are harder to find than you might think. I ended up ordering from Dharma Trading Co. and first ordered the DecoArt SoSoft Opaque Fabric Paint, which had tons of colors to choose from. I tried to find them locally to really see the colors in person, to no avail, so I over-ordered to have a good variety. The colors were fine, but not exactly what I wanted, so Betsy and I ventured to an art supply store in the Crossroads (which I can never remember the name of, but it's on the corner of SW Blvd and Central St.) and I ended up with the Jacquard Textile Colors, which are more pricey, but better colors. And, by the way, that art store downtown is totally worth a visit - great stuff!

You can see in the background that I tried to doodle / practice paint before I got to the real deal. I Googled around for some more picture-inspiration and ended up with a few knock-offs of fabrics I liked and just hand-drew. For the navy and white dots, I just used a drinking glass that was about the right proportion and drew lots of circles. And cut out lots of circles. I drew them directly on the freezer paper.

I know this white freezer paper is hard to see on the white pillowcase, but I found the center of the pillow and ironed on the first dot there.

Then just proceeded out in every direction, trying to keep them as even as possible, with the edges touching.

When I got to the perimeter of the pillow, I had to cut more circles so the design would be complete, and I just let them hang over the edges. You kind of have to think of the design backwards - your paint goes in the space between the papers, so you want those little diamond-y shapes to be as symmetrical as possible. Use paint to fill in! I use a little sponge brush and if you load it up, usually one coat is enough. Try to paint over the paper toward the bare fabric, instead of the reverse, to minimize the amount of paint the seeps under the paper stencil. If you iron really well, there should be minimal issue. Also, put some paper inside the pillow to avoid leaking through.



I also knew I wanted a greek key-ish pattern and decided to make two of these pillows for a little symmetry, with the rest being different. I was going to sew it with ribbon, then thought painting would be just as easy (and/or cause just as much brain damage). My pillow inserts were 18 inches square, and the pillow covers were about 16x16.5 inches for a nice tight fit. Based on the proportion of the cover, I drew one corner of the pattern by hand. Yes, I am OCD and like math. It's right about this point that my mother is cringing.



I colored it in with black marker, then copied it 8 times. Of course I didn't have the foresight to realize that some of the corners would need to be flipped over to make it work (it isn't a perfect square), but with creative taping and measuring, it made it work. I think what I did next (it's been awhile), was to staple my patten to a sheet of freezer paper so it wouldn't move, then carefully cut out the black part with an X-acto knife. If you cut out the big middle piece, for example, then iron that carefully in the center of your pillow cover, you can then add the little squares in the corners and outside border so it fits nicely.



This is an abstract-y pattern that I hand drew from another fabric I liked. This piece of freezer paper is the exact size of my pillow cover.

Through trial and error, I've found that if you cut out a single piece at a time, starting at the perimeters of your design, and iron each piece individually, your end result will be much closer to the original design, versus cutting it all out and trying to piece it together again. (See nightmare / future tutorial on painted headboard). And, remember, the painted part will be the areas without the paper!

I made two additional covers, one with an initial that I printed from Word, just like the birthday t-shirt number idea, and one with random stripes, just ironing different widths of freezer paper to create a stripe pattern I liked. The pillow inserts were mostly from Williams Sonoma Home, which surprisingly had one of the best prices I found and free shipping. You can also find inexpensive feather pillow inserts if you frequent the clearance aisle at Home Goods and buy terribly ugly pillows that have a zippered cover and good feather insert.

And, the final result! I'm pretty happy with the outcome for the time / money invested. The sketching / cutting / painting took me most of a day, but could easily be split up into smaller projects.

The huge canvas picture was taken by Rasy Ran in Texas and blown up big by Chic Canvas through a deal on One Kings Lane. I still need some window treatments in this room - thinking kind of a sheer linen roman shade but, as they say, that's a project for another day.