My first Bench pillow!


I promised a picture of my new kitchen bench.  I finished painting it last week just in time for company.  It took 1 coat of primer, 3 coats of white latex paint, and 3 coats of Poly-crylic.  The finish  turned out perfectly...not sticky, like some other furniture I've painted.  Anyway, here it is in all it's glory.  I moved the table out of the way for viewing purposes.
 And last night I finished making a pillow for it.  I'm not sure if I'm going to put a cushion on it  to sit on, but I know it needs pillows so I'm starting with those.  Here is my first one!  I'm going to make big flowers inspired by the fabric in the valences above.  The side pillows are ones I bought at Ross as pillow forms for the future pillows... they happen to look great with it.  I decided it is way cheaper to buy decorator pillows to use as pillow forms than getting ones from the fabric store ( 20x20 pillow form at Joann cost 17.99 or 11.40 with a coupon, 20X20 pillow set of 2 cost 15.99 at Ross)
This flower was inspired by this flower in the fabric.

Similar right?

 Want to see how I made these petals?

 I sewed a strip of 2" red fabric to a strip of 2 1/2 in teal fabric...

then folded it half and ran a gathering stitch on the bottom edge.


 Then I cut it into 7 inch pieces and gathered them up and pinned them like so around a 12 in circle drawn on my pillow fabric.

Then I watched it grow...when I got closer to the center I cut the length to 6 inches for smaller petals.

 And there you have it...

The finished dimensions of the pillow are 20" x 20".  The petals took about 1 yard of fabric all together.
I'm linking this up to the Blogger's Pillow Party over at Stitched in Color.  If you are in need of some pillow inspiration check it out.


Blogger's Pillow Party

Oh, one more thing...I'm super excited because Doug just ordered us a DSLR...  I can't wait to be taking better pictures... Yahoo!!.

11 comments:

  1. I love window benches! That is a really smart technique tha you used!
    We bought a dSLR recently, and I am horrible with it. :( I hope you blog about photog tips, if you stumble across any!

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  2. Cool technique to make the flower pillow! I love the bench!

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  3. Darling pillow! Thanks for sharing your technique!!

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  4. Awesome! Love the 3-d effect!!!!!

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  5. I love the red fabric you used for the petals, it makes them look even more delicate and it goes so well with your valance. Nice!

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  6. It's amazing! beautiful flower on your pillow!

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  7. Beautifully done. Your pillow absolutely pulls in that print. Nice tutorial too! Thanks for joining in on the Pillow Party!

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  8. Beautiful pillow, thanks for sharing.

    Hugs

    CARELI

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