Custom Michigan Cottage Burlap Pillow

It's been a crazy week filling custom orders, but I'm back with a few photos to share of a recent custom pillow I created upon request from a customer. My customer was looking for a repurposed burlap pillow, similar to our Michigan Home pillows, but with the word "Cottage" rather than "Home".  It's pretty common for people in this part of the state to head "up north" (the generic term we like to use).  There is so much beautiful scenery and a lot of recreational activities to do in this state and many of us take advantage of getting away to a cottage or a lake to enjoy nature and get away from the city.  I thought this was a fun idea, so I took on the challenge of creating a new stencil to make this custom design, excited to think that I could potentially be a part of decorating someone's special getaway cottage here in Michigan.

Following my tried and true freezer paper stencil process I shared here, I got started on this pillow by printing out a few extra block letters that I did not already have from another stencil on hand. I then measured and traced the letters to freezer paper and cut them out with an X-Acto knife so that I would have clean, sharp lines, no matter how small of a cut I needed to make. I ironed the stencil to a long piece of repurposed burlap, hand-painted and sealed the text using black fabric paint and an iron, and then continued with sewing the pillow.

The Michigan Cottage burlap pillow has a light cream cotton canvas back, which is how I prefer to make our pillows since it provides structure and support to the burlap and fits with any color scheme. As you can see, this pillow is long - measuring at about 28 inches in length. I can imagine it on display on a long wooden bench in a hallway when you walk into a cottage or as an accent pillow on a love seat in a cozy living room.

I wish I had better photos to share, but with the shorter winter days, I just can't make it home in time during the week to take photos when there is light outside. It's not ideal, but aside from waiting until a weekend, the only option is to try to take photos using the lights I have available indoors in the evening. I changed these to black and white so that you could focus on the design of the pillow, rather than the distraction of the poor lighting and color tones.

With that, I'm off to work on a few new burlap items that I'm hoping to get listed this week in time for the last holiday rush.  We're taking all final orders by Wednesday 12/16 so hurry up and visit our Etsy shop for any last minute gift ideas!


Erica