DIY: Painted Pillows

To help tie in the new color schemes for my bedroom and living room (and to add some always welcome coziness), I sewed up some pillows. I spent many hours looking at fabric, matching colors and debating prints. I did end up buying some fabric with a print, but for the most part, figured I'd be better off creating my own. I used quilting solids and a flat sheet I no longer used (= a great way to repurpose bedding). Behold:

The great thing about this is you can customize the colors much easier. Plus, I used colors I’d already been using on other projects, such as the colors used on my fabric wall panels and painted lamp base . To make the paint compatible with the fabric, I added textile medium to the paint. It really helps when painting the fabric, because it changes the texture of the paint, making it easier to brush on. I also recommend using a brush with stiffer (but not cheap) bristles so you don’t overpaint the fabric.

I probably wouldn’t call this an easy DIY, since I didn’t use stencils. I painted the designs freehand the designs but did draw them on the fabric with chalk first. Silly me didn’t plan it very well and sewed the pillow forms first. (Check out the simple sham instructions here.) To accommodate my lack of planning, I inserted wax paper into the sham, so the paint wouldn’t bleed through to the other side of the sham. You could also use cardboard; I was just too lazy to cut out the shapes so wax paper was a better choice. I had to paint several coats to get the opaqueness I wanted, so this is a project best suited for when you have a few minutes of spare time or while working on other projects, to allow each coat to dry.

Even with the textile medium making the paint more fluid, it still seems to leave the painted areas a bit stiff on the pillow. Considering that, I didn’t paint anything my face would be lying on or part of the pillow in which my face wouldn’t be exposed. All in all, it was a decent DIY project… and definitely creative.

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