you are my sunshine, my lovely sunshine

You are my sunshine, my lovely sunshine...

I instantly fell in love with this pillow I found via pinterest

it's origionally from here, but it was a wee bit of a luxery item at $159!

Then I saw this great tutorial, also via pinterest, for the same style pillow.

I've never loved using stencils because I have a hard time getting everything lined up and looking as neat and straight as I want it to, but I kept thinking about this pillow and then a lightbulb went off!!! I used scrapbooking letter stickers instead of a stencil, it was easy and I love how it turned out!

Here's the breakdown of how I did it:

I cut an 18" square of fabric (for a 18" pillow form) and taped it to a 17" square piece of cardboard.

Here's the front

and here's what the back looked like at that point.

Next, I marked off even sections with a water soluble pencil (so I'd be sure to have straight lines across the pillow). I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, but I don't think this step was necessary and would skip it next time because of how well the ruler worked in the next step.

I used a ruler and placed my letter stickers how I wanted them to look (there are lots of different styles of letter stickers in the scrapbooking isle and they are only about $1.50 a package when Hobby Lobby does their half price sale).

The stickers provided a great visual and I was able to move them around a little until I had everything to my liking before I made any permanent marks on my fabric.

I then used a fine point fabric marker to outline the letters,

once all the outlining was done I removed the stickers,

and filled in the letters with a larger tip fabric marker

I heat set the pillow front by ironing it, attached a pillow back with a zipper enclosure and washed out the water soluble pencil lines.

Now I have a great pillow to prettify my deck!!!

You are my sunshine

my lovely sunshine

you make me happy

when skys are grey

you will know dear

how much I love you

Just another installment in my pinterest

project resolution challenge!

(see here)

shared at http://www.younghouselove.com/

and at http://www.whipperberry.com/