Desiree from The 36th Avenue shared a tutorial for those cute pumpkins on Tatertots and Jello, but what I really loved were the pillows. How cute are those?! And what an easy holiday decoration. We have throw pillows on our couches all the time anyway. I could just make pillow covers for those to spookify the house a little without adding any clutter. Win! I was a little sad that I couldn't find those pillows anywhere else on her blog, but that's not a big deal. All I needed was some inspiration {thank you, Desiree} and Google images and I was all set. Here are my finished pillow covers in all their glory:
Allow me to introduce you to them. Yes, they have names because I'm just that nerdy. My husband rolled his eyes so hard you could almost hear it when I told him. Are you ready?
Skelly Clarkson
and Dead-ie Vedder. Har. Har.
I decided to go with gray and white instead of a more traditional color scheme for a couple of reasons. One, I had some old white pillow cases that fit my couch pillows perfectly with just a little alteration and I found that great gray and white floral fabric at Goodwill the other day {it was actually a pillowcase which I will use for another project, but I wanted the use the scraps because I'm in love with that print}. Second, My red couches are suuuuuuper shabby and I'm hoping beyond hope to slipcover them in the next year or so {or replace them if we win the lottery}. The fabric I have all picked out for the slipcovers is a medium gray twill so when I use these pillows again next year {or the year after that} they will look really great. For now I'm kind of liking the gray-scale faded newspaper quality about them.Anyway, since there was no official tutorial I followed, I'll just give you a quick idea of how this all went down. I knew I was going to have to freezer paper stencil the skulls onto my pillowcases. There are a bajillion tutorials out there that can teach you how to do that, if you don't already know. If you do a search on Pinterest I'm sure you'll find a great one. I found some pictures on Google images that I thought would work if I doctored them up a bit in Gimp. I'll share my patterns for you to download if you want, but just know that they are pretty dirty. Not dirty in a risque way -- the edges are all pixelated and funky. That kind of dirty. You'll have to use your artistic flare when tracing them to round out the curves and make Skelly's hair all pretty. It's not hard.
Also, I drew in an eye socket on Skelly there as I was tracing. I just thought she looked better that way. Once I had stenciled them onto the pillow cases they looked pretty plain so I made Dead-ie a bowtie and Skelly a flower for her hair. I'll share that flower tutorial with you tomorrow, but here's a sneak peek:
If your pillows are smallish, you could probably stop there. Mine are kind of big and the design still looked too . . . unfinished or something. I took an oval frame that I had and lightly traced around it in pencil on my pillowcases. Then I took 2" wide strips of my coordinating fabric and made little pleats and pinned it all along my pencil line. I just sewed a straight stitch right around the middle of my ruffle to attach it to the pillowcase. The edges of the fabric are unfinished so they will fray over time and add to the look. To finish off the pillow covers I simply shortened the pillowcase to the desired length and added some gray ribbon ties on the open end to close it up.
Because I had everything on hand and the fabric was scrap from another project, these pillows ended up costing me nothing but a little time. I love that! I firmly subscribe to the pioneer adage, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without". The kids love these pillows so I think it was time well spent. If you stop by tomorrow I'll show you how I made that tattered flower and share a striped ribbon flower pillow I made to accompany these ones. Have a great day!
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ReplyDeleteI love these! I'm thinking about using the images on shirts for my son and daughters for Halloween. Would you mind sharing your search words that you Googled them with? I've been scouring the Internet but must not be using good descriptors. :)
ReplyDeleteI think I used skull or skull silhouette or skull cameo. I had to look through lots and lots of pictures I didn't like to find these two. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI love them!! I need to have you make Nathan a Halloween Costume with all your creativity. I am stumped!!! And Jon recently lost his job so broke as a joke! haha! Let me know if you have any easy ideas! :)
ReplyDeleteLove them!
ReplyDeleteI just shared them at my FB page... Visiting your blog today from the SYTYCB Party!
Desiree -- I am so flattered. Your pillows were excellent inspiration!
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