I don't know why some projects take so long to complete, because when you get right down to it they're so stupid simple that the 5 minutes it takes to actually get them done should inspire you to just get them done. Ha! Not so.

I had a pillow project for Reagan that should have gotten done months ago, but I got 90% done and then stopped. The last 10% only took 5 minutes, but it took 3 months to spend those 5 minutes to get it done.

On Reagan's window seat, I had (have) several pillow ideas planned, and I had two 12-inch pillow forms lying around, so you'd think I'd at least get those 2 pillows onto her seat before she got here. Nope! You'd be wrong. I decided to wait until the wee hours of the morning one day after feeding her to get the one pillow done. The other pillow did take some time, because I only had 5% of it done for the longest time.

So the first pillow I made for her is a simple blue chevron print with some crocheted flowers on it. Super simple. The flower pattern I used is {HERE}. I simply changed hook sizes to get the various sized flowers for the pillow.

The second pillow was inspired by a monogram I saw somewhere and I can't for the life of my find the blog post that inspired me. I designed the monogram and then drew it out on the pink fabric. Then several satin stitch sessions later, I had this really pretty outlined monogram. Another 5 minutes to sew up the pillow and VOILA! 2nd pillow is done.


I have more pillows I want to make for this window seat, but for now these 2 will have to suffice. At least until after Christmas. :)

I have been in love with wood grain texture for a long time.

The problem?

I couldn't find the perfect grain texture for my house, or if I did the perfection was too expensive. Sadness.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I cut up a random curtain for pillows. Well the pillow today was the other pillow made from that curtain.

This pillow takes some {drying} time and courage to do. Well - courage on my part. So here's what I made, then I'll get to how I had to just jump in to do it.

So this is the first version. My next version was a better evolution, but I do love the exploded views of the wood grain on this pillow.

All I did was cut the squares for my pillow, then I taped all of the edges of one of the squares to my cutting mat. I used masking tape.

Then I had some images of  different wood grain textures in front of me, for inspiration, and I really then just dove in. It was scary as hell. I don't do freehand. Not unless I can undo it. There's no undoing this. I actually started off with the knot that is somewhat off-center and it really just evolved from there.
I used metallic gold paint for this pillow. I love the sparkle and shine it adds to the organic movement of this pillow.

For the next pillow, I used a metallic copper and watered it down, and I was able to achieve a finer line with thinner consistency.
You can seen in the above picture how the copper one is a more complex, but my dear friend, Lauren, took this pillow home. I may have to do another wood grain pillow for the basement. I am so in love with this look.

So here's my new beaut sitting next to the Van Halen (as the hubs is calling it) pillow. :)
Isn't the gold  the right amount of shine to the sea of camel and green? Best part?

This pillow is washable. Oh yea.... :)

See you guys tomorrow!

Even though the weather here in NoVA is pretty nice. You don’t even need a jacket today. It has not stopped me from dreaming about cooler weather.

It doesn’t hurt that I’m also super excited for Thanksgiving to hurry up and get done, because I can’t wait to put up Christmas!

But seeing as how I still have to wait, and I get a little sad that Christmas comes down. I miss the glitter and glitz.

So I have created a pillow that will solve my dilemma. It might be a little soon to have it out, but I’m not too worried about it.

This pillow is super simple to do.
This pillow actually started out as a curtain, but I didn't need the curtain anymore so I cut it up, because it was a nice weight for  pillows. I ended up getting two 16" pillows  out of it.

I found a tree silhouette that I liked in my Photoshop shapes. I don’t know where I got it. I downloaded it a while ago. I sized this shape to fit my paper, then saved it as a jpeg.

I opened up Silhouette Studio and imported my tree jpeg and then traced it and cut it out. Now, I just cut it out on regular paper, but you could certainly use freezer paper.

After I had my stencil, I took my fabric marker (the kind that disappears after a bit) and traced inside each of my cut sections on my pillow square.

I watered down some matte Tulip fabric paint in chocolate brown.  I thinned it down so that it was a bit like ink. Might have been slightly more watery than that and then with a careful hand and a small paintbrush I filled in each of my tracings. Let the paint dry.

After the tree was dry, I pulled out the Tulip glitter bond.  I took another paintbrush and kind of dabbed/ dragged the paintbrush over the tops of some of the boughs of the tree. Then I dumped glitter all over that. I did this until I was  happy with the effect. I then put all my glitter back into its bottle, and prayed that I didn’t dump it all over myself.

Then I let the glue dry for a couple of hours.

Now I’m enjoying my oh-so-pretty pillow. I love how understated she is. I am also loving that I can leave her out through January.

What do you guys think?

Have you guys ever seen something and said - Oh, I can do that, and for a lot cheaper?

Of course you have. We all have.

How many times do we actually do it? In a timely fashion?

Well I'm 1 and 1.

Not to shabby. Not bowl eligible, but still - it could be 0 and 2. :)

So anyways a while ago I saw some pillows that were stupid simple. They were randomly adorned with twill tape.

How simple is that? It's simple and quick. Lay down the twill tape over your square of fabric, sew the tape down and then finish the pillow like you normally would. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

So here's my version.

 Look how shiny the twill tape is. Its not really, but there is a bit of a shine. I think the tape against the duck will hold up just fine against the boys. The poor pillow I had to replace did not stand up. The taffeta shredded beneath the boys antics. Le sigh.

Here's my new beaut hanging out with my poor tired hubby. At least they look nice and relaxed. :)

What do you guys think?

I'm at it again. I cannot get enough of these felt dahlias, of course now I want to add flowers to everything, but so far I've been able to restrain myself. Almost.

I may have gotten my fix. About 9 times over.

So you guys remember when I made my Dahling Headband?

Yep these are the same dahlias.

I just added some yellow seed beads to center. I just added a drop of hot glue to the centers, and then poured the seed beads over the hot glue. When the glue had cooled a bit, I pressed the beads down into it, and then just shook off the excess.

Then I let all 9 flowers sit for about a month while my sewing room got ravamped, but last night I decided it was time to finish this project.

I had gotten some pretty  yellow linen from Ikea a while back and it'd even been all washed up. Saves me time. :) So I cut out two 15" squares and then sewed up 3.25 of the seams. Why the quarter, because on that 4th side I sewed about 2" in from each corner, just so the corner would be nice and finished. :)

After turning the pillow I folded it in half, and then ironed a line down the center, then I brought each edge to my ironed middle line and ironed 2 more lines. I rotated the pillow 90 degrees and then did it again. So I ended up with a nice grid that had 9 intersections of ironed lines.

I stuffed a small cardboard square into the pillow, because I did not want to accidentally glue the two side together. The fabri-tac was then whipped out and I proceeded to paint the bottoms of the dahlias with glue and then stuck them on to the pillow at the ironed intersections. I made sure to press each one down, and then as I was working another project I would place the stuff I was working with on the pillow to add some weight and help those flowers stick. Not that I was worried, because fabri-tac bonds everything nice and tight, but you know - the boys.

The boys likes to play- hard, and my darling pillow may not be able to stand up to their type of playing.

So after the glue was dry, and I had a nice night's sleep, I removed the cardboard, and shoved my pillow form into the linen and then sewed up the opening.
Isn't she precious? She's going in my bedroom, which is going to get a summer makeover just as soon as I wash the sheets. Which maybe should be sometime in the near future, hopefully. ;-)

Have a great day guys!
Heather

Don't you love facebook? I do. It has allowed a lot of us to reconnect with people we would have otherwise lost touch with, whether by choice, time or just because things happen. 

So I'm sick. That was a terrific Mother's Day gift, but my wonderful guys let me take a 4 hour nap and that helped a lot.

You know what doesn't help? Sounding like Minnie Mouse. No one takes you seriously when you sound like Minnie Mouse.

It's worse that when you try to get loud, or god forbid - yell. There's no sound, and the sound that does escape are squeaks.

Your 5-year-old will tell you that we don't whine. Whining is not allowed, Mommy.

When you tell him that you're not whining that you're just talking, he will laugh at you. Loudly. And in your face.

You may frown, and the uppity brat will come over and give you hugs, all the while still laughing at your expense. You will eventually join him, because - let's face it - you do sound ridiculous.

So enough about my hoarseness, lets get on with what I've been doing!

There are some new additions to the shop! I still have a couple take photographs of, but for right now here are the two that are good to go!
 What do you guys think? I almost don't want to sell them. They're so very sweet and precious, but they don't match a thing in my house.
 Can't you just see them resting in a lovely parlor? Or a sun room? How about a little girl's room, or a sweet garden nursery? Here are the links: Hydrangea & Rose

Oh the possibilities.

And in other news -

I have sponsor spots open! It's $4 a month, or if you want, and because you love this little 'ole blog of mine so much you can do 3 months for the low, low price of $10. :)

Alright guys - I've got some hot cocoa calling my name. :) I'll chat with ya later

~Heather

Pier 1 ain't got nothing on me! If you guys 'like' my facebook page, then you'll know that I received a Pier 1 catalog a few weeks ago and in it was quite a surprise. Look and see for yourself :)
 Do you see what I'm talking about? Oh wait...no you don't because I haven't shown you the funny part yet. Well then here it is!

Hey guys! I don't know if you've noticed, but we're up at 260 followers. How exciting is that?

I'm super excited about that. So I thought today I'd show you guys a post from way back when and what I did to update it. :)

So the original post is HERE! This post is originally from April!

Here's a picture of what I made though.

Well here is another pleated pillow. I am in love with pleats. I love my boys, but boys do not like girly pleats or girly pillows, and husbands do not like girly pleats or girly pillows in their sons' rooms. So I will make these girly pillows for you guys and then put them up in my shop so that someone else can enjoy them. :) I like this plan. Do you know what's nice about this particular pillow? Imagine doing it with a boldly color variegated thread against a gray. That's not girly at all. Maybe I will end up with a full on boy pillow that's pleated. Ruh roh...the gears are turning. Ok well I'll consider the most recent idea that just vomited itself from my keyboard, I will tell all of you how to create your own square pleated pillow.

Well as promised here is the first of a few pillow tutorials for pillows that I made for the Gift Fair this past weekend. The pillow we're making today is a nod back to when dresses had smocking and intricate pintucked patterns. So without further ado, lets get started!

Saturday was my very first gift fair, and it was a learning experience. I met a lot of nice ladies, and chatted with them throughout the day. There was not a lot of traffic, but for the traffic we got I'm quite happy with what we sold. I got a lot of ideas about where to head with the etsy shop and what changes to make to what I sell.

I want to share with you guys what the booth looked like. It did change a couple of time during the day as I rotated the pillowcases around and what not, but I am quite happy with how our space turned out.

I need send out a big thank you to Marian for all of her help and advice on setting up the booth. She answered all of my questions, because I was quite apprehensive about how it was all going to come together. :)

So without further ado, here is what the space looked like Friday night.

I've had this idea floating around for a while, and I'm finally got around to making it. Too bad its an incomplete thought. I don't know how to finish this pillow. :(

UPDATE

I've now added the pictures I forgot to put in originally! Also when I came downstairs this morning, this is what I found.

Yep....that's Harrison and a mess of torn toilet paper. Thank goodness his bink was there, otherwise he might have been eating said mess.  :)

I am deeply saddened to write the words for this post. I have lost a very good and helpful friend. He was tragically caught in an accident. He didn't see it coming, so thankfully he did not feel anything. I am trying to take solace in that fact. I still can't believe it. He's been there for me through thick and thin and I could always depend on him. He helped guide me and I relied on that talent. I feel even more guilt and sadness in the fact that I am the one who ran him over. I didn't see him. I didn't even know he was there, and now, because of me, I have lost one of my greatest allies.

What do you get when you're browsing through MarthaStewart.com? Like me, your brain probably starts going in all sorts of directions with new ideas. So what do you get when you cross these 4th of July decorations with a pillow? 

Ok so that may sound a little weird, and even one of my tweets yesterday was odd....mostly because I misspelled dyeing. My husband was quite bereft when I stated that dying was on the list of things to do. Ooops. :) I'm happy to share this dyeing adventure though!

I did some research after my mishap, but what I want to accomplish was a gradated color effect for the pillow case. Here's the official term for that dyeing technique:

Ombré - rhymes with the Spanish word hombre, but is actually a French word meaning "shade" or "shadow". (Ombre without the fancy "é" is a very old card game!)

It was my first time actually dyeing anything (tie dye does not count, because I have never successfully done that)....and I must say that it was fun and thank goodness for bleach. :) So on to the show!

I'm sure all of us have seen something in a store and said, "I can make that, and for a lot cheaper than that." I had that moment in Target about a week ago, and I said then I was going to make that pillow. Well, I didn't forget about that pillow, but I did forget how it was sewn together. So back to Target we go.

How do you deduce how a pillow has been sewn together at a store with no intention of buying it? You unzip it, remove the innards, turn it inside-out and hold it up to the light while your mother takes pictures {because you let your phone completely die}.