Making Pillows Out of Fabric Napkins

I'm known for visiting thrift stores and one of the first places I head to in the store is the linen section. I just love me some fabric napkins.

This love of napkins started way way back when I inherited a linen table cloth and napkin set from my aunt. It had some embroidery on it in grey and it was just a so so design in my opinion but there was something about those napkins that I loved.

Those napkins became the pillows that you see below and I have not stopped making pillows from fabric napkins since then.

To make the grade the napkins have to have the following:

1. Be attractive to me whether it's the fabric or the texture of the fabric
2.  No stains because once there is a stain it's so hard to remove or should I say impossible and I'd really rather be designing and sewing then trying to get a stain out. 
3. A good size that would translate well into a pillow. Some are just too small and some are too big. Perfect to me is an 18" x 18" napkin.
4. The napkins need to be uniform in size so that when I size them up together one isn't bigger than the other, unless I'm making a different fabric back then it doesn't matter

Below is a picture of some new ones I just made.

I loved these napkins the minute I saw them and the seller at the flea market knew what I wanted them for but was surprised that I didn't care that they were a polyester blend fabric. Nope didn't care because the texture of the material and that little stitch border was calling my name. Size was a perfect 18" x 18".  I got the set of four napkins for $3.00.

First up was finding some images that I could iron on to the front of the pillows. Found some great ones at The Graphic Fairy site and also purchased some on Etsy.

The Transfer Artist Paper from Amazon  is my go to product for iron on. This product works great!

Because I loved the look of this fabric I made the backs of the pillows in linen fabric with the envelope style for ease of inserting the pillow so I could get four pillows instead of two.

Here's a closer look at the texture of the fabric and the stitch on the edge that I love.

Stay tuned for my next post and I'll give you some easy instructions for making your own fabric napkin pillows.

Using What I Have Challenge!

The challenge that I have accept to take is to Use What I Already Have in my creative projects. This at first seemed to be a bit daunting but it turned out to be so much fun.

So for today my goal was to make some pillows out of cloth napkins.

Right away the opportunity came up to put this challenge to the test. 

I had already printed out this wonderful bird image from the Graphics Fairy web site and once that was done and ironed on the napkin I realized that the image was a bit too small for the size pillow it was going to be.  Normally I'd run to the fabric store frantically trying to find a solution, but nope the challenge was to use what I had on hand.

So hunting in my stash of stuff I found this wonderful ribbon (that I already had) that was perfect.  Not having any brown thread on hand to sew the ribbon onto the pillow I then decided I'd use some of that iron on tape I had saved from some Ikea curtains.  I was pretty surprised this challenge thingy wasn't really a challenge but was a way to get my creative juices going. 

I am so pleased with the design and to think that I had everything that the pillow needed. No running to the store wasting time and dollars, the pillow design ingredients were already there.

Oh yeah you see that line in the image but you are way too polite to mention. Yes it was a goof up on my part. I let the hot iron hit the image and it created that line. Another one of those lessons learned, such as protect your iron on image with cloth if using an iron near it.

This challenge for me is on going and with the stash of stuff I have I should be unstumped for quite a long time. 

BTW with that obvious line the pillow has found a home with me.

I'm Partying At The Following

Sunday's Best at My 1929 Charmer
Brag Monday at the Graphics Fairy

Fabric Napkins Take On A Whole New Look!

I've had these linen type napkins for quite a few years stashed in my fabric pile . Originally they were my aunt's and I think her plan was to embroider on them. I confiscated them because I loved the feel and look of the fabric and always thought they would make really cute little pillows. Plus you know they were like a blank canvas waiting to be something else. They measure 14" x 14"

Napkins waiting for the day to become pillows

But you know how you have these great ideas and they (the napkins) just sit there until tomorrow or the next day or maybe even the day after that. Those tomorrows became years.

So I'm here to tell you I finally got them made. What explanation do I have for finally getting them done?  I think I heard them calling to me from the fabric stash begging to be the promised pillows. When napkins start calling it's time to listen and do.  Sorry folks that's the best reason I can come up.

The edges were already hemmed so my idea was to just sew two together just below the hem line and then stuff with some loose fill. 

Plain white little pillows are just...... plain and I wanted more pizazz  like transfer image pizazz. I love the vintage french looking black and white images and the graphic fairy has some really great ones. So I went browsing on her web site and came up with a few that I thought would be perfect for the pillows.

This brings up the point of transferring images onto fabric.  Browse the web and you will find all these different techniques on how to do it.  It can be a bit overwhelming. After much research I decided that Lesley Riley's Transfer Artist Paper would be my method of choice. It does a wonderful transfer and it's so easy and I'm all for easy.

So I had enough napkins (10) to make 5 pillows. I used 5 different images from the Graphic Fairy.

Black and white pillows with a french flair

The above picture is just 4 of the 5 pillows and you only get to see 2 of the images I used from the Graphic Fairy . Below is a close up of another image.

This one is my favorite.

I think these little pillows make a great accent up against some larger pillows, maybe on a bed.