One of a Kind Pillow Again!

I love to sew and love to take items that were meant for one thing and give them a new life with a new purpose.

I do that with fabric napkins and also doilies.

Doilies that want to be a pillow

I got this set of two doilies quite awhile ago in fact it's been so long I can't even remember what I paid for them. When I purchased them I had in mind that they would become a pillow. One doily for the front and one for the back.

After deciding to use these doilies for a pillow I then went on to decide how the pillow would look. First off I wanted ruffles on each end. The perfect fabric for that was my black and white toile fabric that I had aged with a tea bath.

I also knew that I wanted a bird image in the center on the front of the pillow and I went looking for that at The Graphic Fairy. So my design idea was all set and all I had to do was just get it done.

These doilies were an odd size so a standard pillow form wouldn't work and there was also the issue of holes in the embroidery design that I had to contend with. So a custom pillow form was needed.

Measuring the exact size of the doilies I used these measurements to make my pillow form with standard muslin fabric.

Pillow form waiting for stuffing

Now I could rant and rave about pillow stuffing and how much I use to hate making my own pillow forms because of the stuffing but all that changed once I started using Morning Glory Cluster Stuff. It's a light weight polyester fill that will not clump or cause lumps. I hate the lumps and this is why I use it. The one draw back is that the fill is so light weight that it feels like the pillow has no weight to it.

Morning Glory Cluster Stuff

Okay so the pillow form was made and now all I had to do was add the image I found at the Graphic Fairy

Graphic Fairy Image

I did some color correcting in my Photoshop program to give the image a bit more of sepia look.

I transferred the image onto the doily using transfer paper that I got from Dharma Trading  

 I ripped the black and white toile fabric at 4" with the intentions of having the ripped edges showing to give it a bit more........... look. (sorry can't think of the right word) Ruffled the fabric with my ruffle attachment and then added the ruffles to each end of the doilies.

With wrong sides together I then sewed all around the doilies using the decorative edge as my guide leaving approx 3" opening so that I could insert my custom pillow form.

Inserted the pillow form and then closed up that 3" opening.

I consider this one of my One of a Kind Pillows  but it does have a big flaw. The transfer of the image caused discoloration on the doily.  If you look around the birds your can see where I cut out the image on the transfer paper. It shouldn't look like this I really wanted it to look like the birds were directly printed on the fabric and not added afterwards.

Anyway it's done I've learned something from this but not sure how I can apply it to my next project but I learned.

I'm off to make some more pillows using transfer paper and napkins. Hopefully I won't be able to find any flaws in these.

Being Creative Or Just Producing?

I've mentioned before that I had a soap making business. I would buy clear glycerin soap already made and recreate an artistic loaf of soap.  I loved coming up with new designs and one of my crowning glories (by my own estimation ) was a bacon fragranced soap.

At the time I sold lots of soap to the social media group Reddit and they were in love with bacon just like the rest of the nation and I was able to get a fragrance that smelled just like cooked bacon.

After acquiring the fragrance I went into design mode and came up with a pretty cool looking bacon soap. The day  I created that soap I was so proud of the job I did. Well this soap became popular  I sold a bit of it but the joy of creating it again and again become one of the demises of the business. It became so that I  hated making this soap, any soap,  hated the smell and the different steps I had to do to get it to look like this.

Fast forward to today and I'm making mostly pillow covers and again I'm getting caught up in just producing and not creating. Did I not learn my lesson with that bacon soap?

So now I'm of the opinion that just to keep me happy and that's important because I live with me and when me isn't happy it ain't pretty, I'm going to do one of a kind pillows. How fun will that be? I like it!!

I started doing my first one yesterday and it's still not done, and it's not perfect and I'm pulling my hair out but I'm happy.

As you do your craft you learn more and more about your medium like I did with the soap and I realize my mistakes with this pillow are just learning lessons on what to do and not do for one of kind covers.


Here's a picture of my first one of kind pillows.

My inspiration came from a sheer pink polka dot fabric that I acquired at a thrift store. I dyed the linen fabric to match the brown of the polka dots and added some vintage trim. My one of a kind pillows are a work in progress and I'll keep you guys informed on how I'm doing.

I'm partying at the following

Sew Crafty Angel