Make It: Painted Burlap Pillow

 

Over this past weekend, I had a couple of hours to work on a personal, fun home decor project. Similar to the DIY striped burlap pillow I made a few weeks ago, I created another burlap throw pillow to complete the couch refresh project.

My original plan was to make a pillow out of some of the scrap burlap fabric I have from the Grounds bags and somehow paint the latitude and longitude of our hometown. So, this project had two specific tasks I needed to research before cutting or sewing: 1) find out the correct coordinates and 2) figure out how to paint on fabric with a homemade stencil. Well, I ended up not using the coordinates and sticking with the name of the city in which we live to reduce the amount of time it would have taken me to create the stencil. As for painting on fabric, that turned out much better than I ever expected. This project was practical, quick, and enjoyable, and I'm here to inspire you to make something similar for yourself or someone you know.

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You will need:

- two pieces of fabric cut in a square about 1" larger than your final pillow dimensions
- pillow stuffing
- thread
- hand needle
- fabric paint and brush
- print and paper (optional)
- freezer paper
- iron
- scissors

The instructions are simple:

First, create a design on a computer using a program like Word or Illustrator. Print it out and trace it (using a window as a lightbox) onto a piece of freezer paper (make sure the shiny, plastic side is down). Or skip this step and freehand a design onto the freezer paper directly. Use the scissors to cut out the inverse of your design. You're making a stencil out of the freezer paper. There are so many options (your hometown name, your last initial, Mr. & Mrs. for newlyweds, etc).

Warm up your iron to a low/medium setting and position the freezer paper with the plastic side down onto the right side of one piece of the fabric. The freezer paper will gently melt and adhere the stencil to your fabric, ensuring that the stencil doesn't move around or leave gaps when painting.

Put a piece of scrap paper or fabric behind the fabric directly under the adhered stencil. This will protect you from having the paint bleed through the fabric onto your work area. Use a brush to paint on the stencil. I applied two coats, but I recommend following the directions on the paint bottle.  For my pillow, I used a product by Tulip called Soft Velveteen. This was a very cool paint as it makes the dried area soft rather than stiff - kind of like velvet. This was a total mistake, but a good one - it was the only fabric paint I could find in the store and it ended up having this awesome effect that makes the paint not feel hard on the fabric especially for an item meant to be comfortable. I highly recommend it!

Once dry, peel back the freezer paper to loosen the stencil from the fabric. Place both squares of fabric right sides together. Sew 3 of the 4 sides using a sewing machine. Flip inside out. Stuff with pillow stuffing. Thread a hand needle and sew the remaining side by hand (remember to tuck in the raw edges to make the seam).
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I free-handed a small heart to jazz  it up a bit.  This was also my first time using freezer paper as a stencil with the iron, and I was amazed. I did some research on this before starting this project and learned that you cannot use parchment or wax paper; it must be freezer paper which is typically only sold at grocery stores.

This project was a blast and I'm not going to lie that it was one of those instant gratification projects. I was able to start and complete it in an afternoon and am now dreaming up more possibilities of what to create next with fabric paint.

Enjoy!
Erica