{31 Days to a Brand New Room}Day 21: Honeycomb Smocked Accent Pillow

If you're joining us for the first time today, welcome!  This is day 21 of a 31-day series about how to give a room in your home a brand new look, from top to bottom, completely DIY. 

You'll find links to all the other posts in the series here, if you're interested.

Today is yet another pillow idea.  I like accent pillows in a bedroom because they give you a lush, finished look.  Plus, I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to try out so I had to make several.  I was looking on Pinterest a while back and came across this AWESOME tutorial for honeycomb smocking  by Dorie on Tumbling Blocks.  I was immediately intimidated and intrigued by it.  I mean, how cool is that?

I've also sewn long enough to know how painstaking that process would be.  However, after yesterday's french knot pillow you know that I am not one to shy away from a tedious, time consuming project.  In fact, it almost feels like a challenge!  I had just enough of my white canvas fabric left to make one more pillow.  In retrospect I will tell you that canvas is really not ideal for this project.  It's too thick and bulky, but I was determined to make it work so I did.

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel by writing another tutorial here when Dorie's is so fantastic.  {It must have taken her HOURS to take all those photos and write it all up.}  I'll just refer you to her if you want to make anything with honeycomb smocking and show you how mine turned out.

I used a cool, colorful fabric I found at Hobby Lobby for the backing of this pillow cover.  I like how the ogee shape of the fabric pattern mimicked the shape of the smocked pattern on the front.  I found the pink box pleated trim at Joann's for less than $2/yard.  For the smocking on the front, I chose embroidery floss in colors to match the backing to give it a cohesive look.

I think the finished pillow looks really custom-made and expensive.  {No one needs to know it only cost me about $4 total and an afternoon's worth of work.}

Thanks for hanging in there with me throughout this 31-day series.  I hope you'll come back tomorrow for another fun accent pillow idea!