Just Another Hang Up: Birds on a Wire Pillow

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Birds on a Wire Pillow

Yesterday I mentioned that I had the desire to add a little spring flavor to our family room, so I made this pillow to express my happiness at the birds beginning to appear in my garden -- one of the first signs of spring in Colorado. Last night I designed another pillow, and I finished it off this morning. This one will reside in our family room as well. It has the same bird theme, but is different in size, shape and images. This pillow seemed jinxed from the start. Everything seemed to go wrong. I cut the fabrics the wrong size three times, so I ended up having to change the size and shape of the pillow. It ended up working out just fine, but some projects take a lot more time, energy and patience than others. Kind of like people.

Again, I started by finding an image on the web that I could use as a stencil. I copied the image into a Word document and printed it off on regular printer/copy paper.

Then I cut out the shapes and taped the paper onto my fabric.

I used a sponge and some craft paint to stencil the images of the birds onto the pillow...

Then I created the "wire" by stenciling a thin line between two sheets of paper...

This pillow is square in shape as opposed the the rectangular one I made yesterday. I used similar gathers in the muslin though, which kept continuity between the two pillows. They reside on opposite sides of the room. I love how the morning sunlight reflected off this pillow as I was taking photos this morning...

I'm afraid the only things spring-like around our house are these pillows. We have an inch of snow on the ground after a spring snowstorm last night. The sun is out though, and warmer temps are forecast for later this week!