Painting Pillows

Here are the pillows I made for the bench in my office. I love pillows! But I dislike sewing. I am sewing challenged.....So I left these pillows until last. I went against all my mother taught me. "Do the things you like the least FIRST and save the things you love for last." Great advice but I totally did the opposite :) Pillows are basically the only thing I know how to sew.

One of the reasons I don't like to sew is I have a hard time finding fabric that I want. It is totally my fault. I get an idea in my head and I HAVE to have it that way. I am willing to settle for something close, but I would rather have it just that way I want it. I couldn't find anything close to the color and pattern I wanted for these pillows so I painted all but one :)

Remember when my hallway looked like this? For all of about 1 week! Well it didn't match the rest of my house but I did love the pattern and color. So in memory of my hallway, I used the same stencil (Alessa Scroll)and same color for one of the pillows.

For the off-white (dare I say ruffly?.........the tom boy in me just shuddered :P) pillow in the front I used an old shirt. I could never pull the gathered thing off on my own so I cut up a shirt from my closet. It was a bright white so I "dyed" it using paint (I will explain that in a sec). Sorry for the terrible picture!

The brown polka dot one was made from left over fabric from when I made the valances for my kitchen. This was the only one that didn't get painted.

The solid blue one was also dyed using paint. I wanted a darker color than the wall color but couldn't find fabric that was the right color. So how did I do it?

It was actually really easy and not too messy.

I added a little paint to an old tupperware bowl and then added an entire 2 ox bottle of fabric paint medium. Then I added some water so that it was quite watery.  Make sure the paint is 100% mixed. If there is paint at the bottom that settles and doesn't get mixed in you will have uneven color for your end result. Stirring it is the most important step.  I got the fabric that I had already cut to the right size and stuck it in the paint. I swished it, squished it, and picked it up and rubbed it. Once I made sure that it has sunk into all of the fabric, I wrung it out really well. ***The absorption of paint will depend of the type of fabric that you have*** I had a plastic kitchen garbage sack that I laid on the table for the fabric to dry. I smoothed it flat. The next day I washed them in the washing machine. Since it is not actually dye, you don't have to worry about it bleeding.  I washed the stenciled one and the two "dyed" ones together with towels and had no problems. After that I ironed them. Then they were ready to sew :) I have used actual dye in the past and this was a lot easier.