19 Pillows and Counting….

After painting our basement Rec Room a lovely medium grey (mentioned here)  I found it necessary to give sofa a little facelift as well.  It’s no secret that I have an obsession for throw pillows.  Before writing this post I counted them all, and yes, I have 19 throw pillows strewn across the entire house….hence, 19 pillows and counting.

I shopped all over (that being: Macy’s, Homegoods, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx) for some cool contemporary throw pillows,but came up empty handed.  I also hit up JoAnn Fabrics and a few stores online to find some fabric to make my own.  Ehhh.  That was a no-go as well.  Somehow in the small city of Charleston there is absolutely no good place to buy non-floral, non-ugly fabric (…maybe another small business idea?!).  Because I am a “right here, right now” kind of girl I decided to drive an hour away to hit up the Hobby Lobby in Huntington, WV.

The idea going through my head: a pop of yellow would really be nice between the bright blue, beige, and grey accents in that room.  I was looking for a yellow and grey chevron, geometric or damask pattern.  I pinned this inspiration pillow on Pinterest (found here):

The Hobby Lobby had some really cool fabric, but not much in my color scheme.  Boo.  I ended up get a blue and white geometric fabric and just a solid yellow.  My mother suggested painting the solid yellow fabric in a pattern.  I liked that idea even though I had never painted fabric (I don’t think puffy paint on a sweatshirt in 1988 counts).  With the intention to paint the yellow fabric, I bought both pieces for a total of $6 bucks, using 2 coupons.  Here are the swatches I ended up with:

I found two random red pillows in our attic that would eventually fit perfectly into the pillow covers I planned to sew.

After taking measurements I cut the fabric and pinned the opposite sides together.

With my Brother SE350 sewing machine I made a simple square along my pins.  I left an opening on one end so I would be able to stuff the old pillow inside.

It only took about 15 minutes to get the two pillows sewn together.   After turning the fabric right side out, this is what my pillow shells looked like:

I picked up a damask stencil ($2.50 with coupon), some acrylic paint, and a stencil brush at AC Moore.

On my yellow pillow I taped the laser cut stencil to the center of the fabric (after measuring to find the center) using green frog tape.

Once the stencil was in place I mixed Americana “Slate Grey” (not ‘gray’..haha) and Liquitex “Titanium White” acrylic paint on a paper plate.

It took a decent amount of white paint to lighten the ‘Slate Grey’ paint, but I eventually ended up with the light grey color I was after.  The paint was applied using a 1 1/2″ stencil brush.  (I inserted a piece of cardboard between the pieces of fabric to prevent paint bleeding, fyi..)

I removed the stencil from the fabric before the  painted dried just in case the paint stuck to the plastic…and let the paint dry for 5 hours before I even attempted to put the pillow together.

It took a little more muscle and a few ripped seams, but I was able to get both red throw pillows into their new custom sewn covers.

I got out a needle and thread to sew the openings shut.

I did a smooth whip-stitch about every quarter inch along my 8 inch opening.  (On a side note, yes, that’s paint in my finger nails.  We did more work on the kitchen reno (found here) this weekend as well.  My type A personality can’t do just one project over a weekend…haha).

Here’s how the pillows look in the basement Rec Room:

My freshly painted yellow damask pillow really isn’t that yellow.  She just doesn’t photograph that well.  Damn her.  It’s really more of a subtle (but bright) yellow. She definitely gives that basement the little pop it needed.

While I was at Kmart yesterday (for a completely different purpose) I found this really cute pillow in the new summer collection (Summer already, seriously?  It’s January!)  I couldn’t let this one pass by.  For a solid $9.99 she was mine and now makes #20 on the growing obession list of Bauer throw pillows.   (the best part?  I didn’t have to sew it!)

In true Before and After DIY fashion here are some ‘After’ photos of the basement with the new pop of yellow!

So there you go.   As I mentioned earlier, we put in a bunch of hours on the kitchen again this weekend.   We are getting so close I can taste it!  Be sure to check back in tomorrow for some new updates on that hot mess.

Happy Monday!

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