I was perusing Pinterest the other day looking for some inspiration and came across these little cuties….

source

The only problem is that these little puppies will run you $148. I’m assuming that’s for both for, but the website is quite unclear on that.  Thankfully it does include the feather insert, but still…it’s ridiculous.

So, I thought I’d try to recreate my own pillow like this.  I pinned it originally for a Whimsy Green idea, but loved it so much I may just have to keep one for myself:)   Speaking of Whimsy, we are open  next Thursday and Saturday, April 24th and 26th !

 Okay, onto the task.  I started by finding a similar font.  I wanted something very basic, just like these pillows.  I ended up using Helvetica in size 900.

Of course my printer doesn’t print this big, so I had to print what I could and then fold and cut on a new piece of paper to make it fit.  It’s not too tough, I think you’ll figure it out.  I ended up with two patterns that looked like this…

I then traced them with a pencil, on of course, my favorite drop cloth material.

I loved the look of the neutral (huge surprise I know) and wanted to try to get the different shade without switching the fabric, so I decided to try to bleach the drop cloth.

I put it in an old ice cream pail of full strength bleach and let it sit for about an hour.  I was so pleased with the results.  It was the perfect shade, and it also frayed from being in there.  I had to rinse out the bleach for quite some time and then laid them outside to dry.  After ironing they were ready to go.

You can tell the color difference between the original drop cloth and the bleached ones here.

Since I’m selling these for Whimsy I decided to do my own creation to help keep the cost down.  I bought some rectangular pillow inserts and decided to put the x and o together so people didn’t need to buy two pillows.  I used black thread to sew the x and o onto the drop cloth and came up with this…

I love how the edges frayed just right…

and the detail of black stitching.

Yep, I’m gonna have to keep one for myself:)

I made a few of those blue striped pillows for whimsy as well.

They would look really cute on a master bed.  But the lighting was the best here:)

I made some with feather inserts, and some with regular filling to keep them less expensive.  I got both type of my inserts from IKEA.  It’s the cheapest/best quality ones I can find.

So go make yourselves a pillow!  Or better yet, come to Whimsy and buy one:)

Happy Crafting!