{31 Days to a Brand New Room}Day 20: French Knot Pillow Cover

If you're joining us for the first time today, welcome!  This is day 20 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.

Thanks for checking in again today!  I've got another accent pillow project to share with you.  I should warn you, this one was a little bit tedious to make, but the results are really cool.  I love french knots.  I don't know why -- it's a weird obsession.  I fell in love with these projects that I saw on Pinterest and knew I had to make one of my own:

{via staciejay123 on Flickr}

{by Emma Smart via Oh Happy Day}

Hello . . . an image created entirely with french knots?!  That's insane!  And sooooo coool!  I printed out my word -- we chose love -- and lightly traced it onto a piece of white canvas.  Then I made french knots all around the outline of my letters.  For hours.  And days.  Thousands of french knots with bright pink embroidery floss on white canvas.  Until I thought my eyes would be crossed forever.  And then some.  

Until I ended up with this:

I have to resist every urge within me to keep from reworking the shape of it -- adding a couple more knots here or there.  It's supposed to be random and imperfect, right?  I finished this pillow with a zipper, just like the one yesterday, and used striped grosgrain ribbon for a pleated ruffle across the top and bottom.  

I also found a piece of this perfect Amy Butler fabric at Goodwill for $1 to use for the back to make it a bit more interesting.

Just look at these french knots.  How could you "knot" love them -- har, har!

At this point, after making my sweater and now this pillow, I think I could make french knots in my sleep.  There are worse things, I guess.  It was a crazy lot of work, but I absolutely adore the one-of-a-kind results!

I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see how I fared in my first attempt at honeycomb smocking . . .