DIY Burlap Pillows

Recently, a friend and her husband were featured on the HGTV Show "House Hunters".  When the episode aired, Liz and Mike had some throw pillows on their bed that I fell in love with.  While watching, I told my husband, "We've got to get some of those pillows." 

Only, when I started searching different sites, I found that most of them cost $60 or more. 

And while I absolutely loved these ones by The Virginia House...

I'm cheap and we're on a grad school budget.

So, I started searching Pinterest for ideas on how to create my own.

I started by creating a stencil using the computer and card stock printing paper.  Follow along if you want the instructions.  If not, skip to the part where I stencil the letters.

Creating the Stencil

1. Start by choosing a font and by adjusting the letter sizes to how big or small you would like them.

2. Next, left click with the mouse and choose "font" on the drop down box.

3. Once the font box has opened, look for the "text effects" option towards the bottom and choose it.

4. Now you can choose "text outline" and "solid line",

(this should give you a solid black outline around your text).

5. And finally, change the font color to white (or a color that is lighter than the black outline).

*There may be an easier and more common sense way to do all of this but humor me...this was the best I could come up with.

6. Print the outline letter and get your box cutter ready.

7. I chose a box cutter rather than scissors and I'm so glad I did.  Make sure you angle the cutter down instead of straight up as your are tracing the letter.  If you miss using the blade, it won't actually cut the paper in all spots and you'll have to redo parts of the tracing.

8. Now you are officially done with the stenciling and you are ready to trace your letters onto the burlap.

As I wrote in my Burlap Wreath Post, burlap is very inexpensive and can sometimes be bought from craft stores for as low as $1.99 a yard. You can't beat that.  I bought one yard of fabric and cut it in half to cover both my throw pillows.

I'm almost embarrassed to say how easy this whole project ended up being.  I actually chose to stencil my letters with a metallic gold Sharpie Marker.  I could have used paint but I figured with a toddler running through my house, I just risked being knocked into and spilling paint everywhere.

And finally, once the letters were touched up, I hand sewed the burlap onto my old throw pillows.  The sewing took a little bit of time but I wasn't sure if I could use a sewing machine on burlap.

 

 

You can find a simple tutorial here on how  to recover pillows.  It really is as simple as  ironing the the hems and sewing the two sides of the pillowcase inside out.  When the two sides are sewn, flip the pillowcase to the correct side, stuff your pillow inside the case and sew up the bottom of the pillow.

And finally...

The total cost for this project was under $5.00.  Because we already had the throw pillows, the only purchases I made were the burlap and the  package of markers.

I'm pretty excited with how these turned out and I may add an "&" sign somewhere down the road to another pillow.  Hope I didn't miss anything!  I would love to see pictures if you make your own.  A special thanks to Liz & Mike for giving me the idea to create some of our own!

Love,

Love Affair With Burlap...

I've gotten quite a few questions about the burlap wreath I just finished so I wanted to add pictures to give others an idea of how to make one.  It was very simple and it's definitely one of my favorite DIY projects to date.

I purchased a yard of burlap at JoAnn's.  The burlap runs for $3.99 a yard and if you use one of their weekly coupons, you can sometimes get it for as low as $1.99 for a yard.  

Hence, the reason I'm having a love affair with burlap right now. 

I began by cutting the burlap into strips.

I used a single stray strand of the burlap and threaded it through a needle-

 (if you look closely at the above picture you can see stray strands of burlap fraying at the edges.  I tore those off until I had one long enough to use as a thread).

I connected the two sides of my first strip of fabric with the needle and thread.

I gathered the fabric in three pleats and brought the needle down from where I first stitched (at the top of my fabric) and brought the needle through each pleat.

Repeat this step.

Gather three pleats and bring the needle down and through the pleats (pulling tight after each set of pleats).  It should begin to look like the picture below.

And when you have finished and run out of your first strip of fabric, it should look something like the picture below.

Below is a completed strip of fabric placed on a wreath to give an idea of what it should look like.

I continued to to make pleats with each strip of cut fabric and I sewed them together until they were long enough to cover the whole wreath.

When the pleats were complete I used a hot glue gun to attach the burlap to the wreath. I also used stray burlap pieces and tied them around both the burlap and the actual wreathe to make it more secure.  The burlap blends  in so you cant see the tied pieces.  

Lastly, go to hobby lobby and go crazy in the dried flower department.

I could spend hours in that place.

In total this project cost under $5.00. 

Soon I'll post about our DIY burlap pillows.  I'm thrilled with how our first one turned out and I can't wait to share the set of them and explain how easy they were to make.

Love,