I was flipping through the Pottery Barn Catalog, getting into the holiday spirit when I saw this:
Inspired by Pottery Barn, once again: you had me at jingle, Pottery Barn! I did consider buying it, for about 35 seconds, but, knowing that I could make it myself, I had a go. Here's what I did:
Using a font called Medici Text, I wrote out the word, "jingle." Then I took three flourishes - Echo Park Flourish, Holly Corner & Vintage Style Flourish Motif. With the Echo Park Flourish, I just rotated it so that it was on its side as above, brought it up to the "e," and welded.
I took the Holly Corner and made a cut, deleting away the part I didn't want. Then rotated the piece and brought it to the bottom of the "J."
Then I cut a piece of the Vintage Flourish off and brought it to the "J." I made it smaller, selected the two flourishes and the "J" and welded.
That done, I moved onto the pillow itself. I looked everywhere for a pillow form that was the right size, but didn't find anything until I was in Target and stumbled upon a Christmas pillow that was perfect. So I decided to cover it! The pillow measured 11" x 18". So, using one of my all-time favorite pillow tutorials, I made a cover out of burlap. Using the guidelines of the tutorial, my front piece was cut out at 19" x 12", and my back pieces were 12" x 12" each. Before sewing them together, I wanted to add the "jingle" words to the largest piece.
Now for the easy part! Or so I thought...dun dun dun... My initial idea was that I would use stencil vinyl to stencil this on the pillow. Which I did try. But the stencil had to be small enough to fit onto the pillow, so it bled into the fabric, and getting it on straight was a nightmare and the kids needed to have dinner and I lost the center of the "e" and it looked terrible. Sigh.
So plan B: I used heat-transfer vinyl (which I handily had on hand from my napkin project!). I sized it in Silhouette studio, then cut it out of flocked vinyl, weeded it and ironed it on! Then I put all of the pillow pieces right sides together and sewed. Finally, I added bells with embroidery thread. And...yay! Another Christmas craft project off the table!
In retrospect, I would like to have made the design bigger. But then, I would also liked to have made the stenciling work! Actually, making the design bigger might make stenciling easier...Hmmm...Upwards, and onwards, crafters!
Jingle Bells and Merry Christmas!
This is unbelievable! Wow! Margaret
ReplyDelete