Pumpkin Dyed Men's Shirts Now Are Pillows

It's Friday and I have a few projects going at once, but I wanted to stop in and show you the pillows I made with the pumpkin color dyed men's shirts.

 These pillows are so easy to  make. I think from start to finish maybe it took 25 minutes. Super super easy.

If you are interested in trying to make these pillows yourself I have a few tutorials that might help.  Here you can see my tutorial on how to Deconstruct a Man's Shirt and then here is the tutorial on how to make the Man's Shirt pillow.
 
If you are going to buy some shirts at the local thrift store or garage sale my suggest is that you buy 100% cotton shirts. I also only buy shirts that are XL or larger so I can get a 16" x16" pillow that will include the pocket. I also like to get long sleeve shirts so I have that extra material to use for another project but it's not a deal breaker (I could live with a short sleeve Xlarge shirt) Check the buttons and make sure they are all there. It's terrible to get started and realize that a button is missing.

So let me know if you have tried making one of these shirt pillows.

The above photo includes 2 16" x 16" pillows and 2 12" x 16" lumbar pillows. I'm visiting the following parties.

Men's Shirt Pillows

A few days ago I showed you how to deconstruct a man's shirt and you can see that tutorial here. Now lets get to the pillow making.

First off let me tell you what I've learned from trial and error. It's best to buy a man's extra large shirt. If the shirt goes by neck size I would go no lower than a 17" neck.  This way when you cut off the sleeves and collar you have enough of the front to make a large pillow that places the pocket in a good place.  Second when placing your pattern onto the front keep the cutting and sewing lines away from the buttons. If you can't do that then you'll need to remove that button


Okay so now decide on the size of the pillow you want. I opted to buy  pillow forms, just because I think its neater looking and also because I wasn't sewing closed the button area and I thought the fiber fill could leak out. I purchased my 16" pillow forms from Joanne's and was very lucky that they had them at 50% off plus that weekend there was a 20% off coupon on top of that, score!

I always have a roll of kraft paper that comes in handy for making patterns and did so for my pillows, making  it  a 17" square.  I added the additional 1" all around to give me enough sewing allowance plus allow a loose look to the pillows. .

I place my pattern  on the shirt front (making sure that the shirt is totally buttoned up) paying attention to where the button line would be and also the pocket. Most of the ones I made the button line is center but I also liked the look of the button area being a bit off to the side. The pocket looked best if it's down a bit from the top of the pillow. I then traced the pattern onto the fabric and then cut. I used a sharpie marker for my tracing figuring it was going to be cut off so it was okay to do that, maybe?

Okay sewed all four sides, snipped the corners so they wouldn't bunch up, unbuttoned the shirt, turned inside out, pressed and inserted pillow and viola!. It's pretty easy.

The first pillow I made looked like this right from the sewing machine. Yawn..... it was boring looking to me. It looked clean, crisp, like a well dressed man, but it didn't fit in with the decorating scheme I was going after.

So I tea dyed it and the coloring was better but there was another problem.  Not sure if you can see it in the photo but there's a streak down the side of the buttons that makes the pillow look dirty. My guess is that no customer will want to buy a pillow that looks dirty no matter how cute it thinks it is. Luckily I can just bleach it out and start again.  Since then I've learned what not to do when tea dying and will gladly share that with you on another post.

So after the tea dye I'm still yawning........ though not so much. Just didn't have that zing I was looking for. So I then did one more thing and made up some small covered buttons with some contrasting shirt material  and glued them on top of the existing buttons.  Now it's better, not perfect but better.   Love to hear what you think about it .Juror is out if I'll make buttons for the rest of  the pillows. Oh yeah I took away the button on the pocket that was a bit of over kill. 

My hope is that when I get all 15 pillows out on display at the craft show they all will look great!

Shirt Collar Fabric Rose Wreath

Collar Roses Wreath

FIRST THE BASICS:   The wreath is a 12" straw wreath purchased at Joann's for $1.80 ($2.99 less a 40% off coupon) Wrapped in burlap that I also purchased at Joann's for $3.99 a yard and also applied a 40% off coupon to that. I purchased 4 yds so I would have quite a bit of length to my strips. I cut one strip about 3" wide then hot glued one end of my strip onto the wreath and started wrapping the burlap around the wreath overlapping about half of each strip so that there wouldn't be any see thru of the straw.

COLLARS BECOMES ROSES:  (if you haven't made fabric roses before do a Google search for a tutorial "how to make fabric roses")
So the above image is the collar and how it looks after being cut from the shirt. There are two sections of the collar, the collar band (the part that wraps around the neck) and the collar points (the other part of the collar)

One Collar Becomes Two Parts

I've separated the collar into two parts and trimmed the collar so that it's cut right up to the stitching on both pieces. So now one collar will produce two fabric roses.  The collar band makes for a smaller rose and I just start rolling from one end to create the inside bud (about 1/4 of the way) and then  twirled and secured. My glue of choice is Fabri Tac. it's tacky right away which helps to keep the rose from unraveling.

Collar Band Rose

The collar point is quite wide and would produce too big a rose for my liking so I folded it in half and secured it with fabric glue to keep it in place. (picture not shown) I'm then ready to twirl and secure.

WREATH FINISHING: So I had collected a number of different color blue collars (as you can see in the wreath image) and was happy with the color composition of them and I just arranged them on the burlap covered wreath and secured them with pins to make sure I liked how it looked before I committed to glue. I tend to leave things to sit for a bit to make sure I'm happy with it and it became apparent to me that something was missing. So I made a few 1 1/2" covered buttons in matching fabric and I think that helped.  So I removed the pins, hot glued the roses and buttons in place and then hot glued some pins into the roses to really secure them so they would stay put. 

My plan is to display this wreath along with the Men's Shirt Pillows at my upcoming craft show. 



Stick around because I'll be posting those pictures of the pillows I've made from these shirts along with a simple How To

Deconstructing A Man's Shirt!

I read in a magazine not too long ago how you could make pillows from men's shirts and I just loved the idea. At the time though I had my soap business and there was just no way I could fit that into my schedule.

Once the business was sold this was one of the firsts things I set out to do. I hunted all over town for the perfect men's shirts for the projects I had in mind. I think I was successful and purchased 18 shirts for $25.00 with a total visit to three different thrift stores.

So today I'll be showing you the deconstructed shirt and my plans for each piece with some follow up blog posts about the individual projects. 

THE COLLAR:  I'll be using these guys once I've collected enough with colors that really work well together and create some fabric roses for some wreaths. I've actually made one already done up in shades of blue and will do a post about that in the next few days.

THE CUFFS:  Right now my plan for these guys is to make some cuff bracelets. I haven't tried this yet but hope to in the very near future. But I have to tell you I'm a bit unsure about that idea so I have these cuffs  sitting out in plain site so that they will sort of speak to me.

THE FRONT & BACK:   Both the front and back of the shirts will be used for pillows. I'll be making the pillows so that the buttons and pockets will be on the front and using the back of the shirt for the back of the pillow.  I plan on doing a 16" square pillow which will take up most of the fabric leaving some for a men's shirt patchwork pillow to also be done in the future. Also some of  the men's shirts have some nice designer labels that I'll be using on the pillows, like Clairborne etc.

THE SLEEVES: Lots of valuable fabric here that could be used for different projects. My original plan was to cut the fabric into strips and create those fabric wrapped styrofoam balls, but we'll see if that is what I'll do. I also liked the idea of creating a men's sachet with a really nice fragrant fill. I love the part of the sleeve that has that little button down the end and will definitely incorporate that into whatever project it becomes.

Okay I'm off to make some pillows and I'll get back with you to show you the wreath I made with the collar fabric roses.