Art piece from fabric and wood

Sometimes I buy things for a specific purpose, and then use them for something entirely different. Perfect example of this was the fabric I bought recently. When I saw it, I thought it would go nicely with the blue color scheme I have going on in my bedroom, and I had a few extra throw pillows that needed covers, so naturally, I purchased the fabric with the intention of making pillow covers (and keeping up the pillow theme of this blog so far). When I put the fabric on my bed, I just didn't like the way it looked with my duvet cover. I just couldn't get into it. Well, it was a yard of fabric that would go to waste, so that definitely couldn't happen.

Then I saw the piece of wood I got for free from work which I had yet to do anything with, and inspiration struck. I decided that the fabric would be an art piece in my bedroom. 

I used a staple gun to staple the fabric to the wood to make it look like a canvas painting. The fabric was a very tight fit, but that's what happens when projects come up without you planning for them, right? 

If you're planning on doing this, I recommend measuring your wood and getting fabric about an inch to two inches more than the wood so you can pull it over the wood comfortably. This project was an easy one to begin with, but it would have turned out much better if I had the correct measurements for my fabric. The piece of wood was about 3ft by 3ft. The only downside to this was that the wood wasn't completely flat, so it looks a teensy bit off on my wall, but it was free, so no real complaints from me. In the final product, you can probably see some places where the fabric wasn't stapled completely to the wood, and that's just because there wasn't any to staple. That's my fault. Again, measure your fabric. It'll make your life so much easier. 

Just pull the fabric tightly over the wood, then fold it over to the back, and staple. Put as many staples in as you need to keep the fabric in place. 

Here's the finished product hanging on my wall. I'm still figuring out what to do with the rest of the wall. 

Another pillow...

So yeah, I swear this blog won't be all pillows. It's just that I have all this leftover white muslin fabric, and I just happened to be on a pillow making kick when I started this blog. Plus, they're super easy.

I've been wanting to do a flower petal pillow for a while now, but didn't have the felt to do it. I finally made the trip to JoAnn's Fabrics to get some. I ended up getting half a yard of yellow felt and some other printed fabric with the intention of making pillow covers for the pillows I'd be putting in my bedroom.

There are a ton of tutorials for this project, and I actually pinned quite a few of them. The one I ended up going with was one from Burlap + Blue. She actually calls to use normal fabric, rather than felt, but I had already bought the felt and using it allowed me to skip a few steps (namely, sewing each petal, which saved a lot of time). If you do plan on doing this project, I'd probably recommend just a quarter yard of felt, rather than half. I only used about a third of the fabric I had, so I'll have to find some other use for the leftover felt. The middle of the flower was a bit too thick for me to put through the sewing machine, and I hate hot glue for most projects (it just doesn't stay!), so I ended up hand sewing that part.

With cutting, sewing, and stuffing the pillow, I think I spent less than an hour on this project. Very easy. I highly recommend it. Here's my finished product.