Sunday, September 27, 2015

Painted pillows

Finally made a few pillows for my couch.  There are thousands of incredibly beautiful pillows for sale in the world, but having $0 dollars to spend on decorating at this point, I opted to try my hand at painting.  I found really inexpensive cotton canvas (cheaper than dropcloths, even) at Dharma Trading.  Wonderful natural fabrics, from linens cottons and hemp to silks and bamboo fabrics, as well as nylon and rayon.  They also sell dyes, markers, paints for dying as offer instruction on their site as well as books and DVDs.  It's a great site to visit for ideas, too.

Anyway, armed with cheap craft paint acrylics and fabric painting medium and a few stamps and stencils, off I went, and below are the results.


 Pillow #1, painted (before I got the fabric medium) and stenciled and stamped, on the front only.  It's a little stiff, but the paint was applied lightly.




Pillow # 2 same paints, mixed with medium, and applied more thickly. I also added a little water to the mix, to make it absorb into the fabric. Used a stencil or two here and made an unholy mess in the upper corner. So, thinking more paint would only make it stiffer, I decided to make a patch.



Cut and raveled a square, and began randomly stitching lines and circles--still getting comfortable with my old sewing machine,  Then I sprayed the patch with water to dampen it and dribbled acrylic inks on it and sprayed some more to move the ink around. Stitched it on with more lines and circles, and I quite like it.

The back of pillow #2, decorated with stamps and brushed on inks.
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4 comments:

  1. peggy gattoSeptember 27, 2015 at 2:09 PM

    I
    LOVE
    these!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bleubeard and ElizabethSeptember 27, 2015 at 6:34 PM

    I had planned to stop by and tell you how much I LOVE your Buddha, but before I could, you had already posted these gorgeous pillows. Looks like you have come up with a great way to make these pillows on the cheap. Who knew the canvas could be so inexpensive. I sure didn't. They turned out great. I'm super impressed and this is the kind of fabric art I would like to try one of these days. Not to make a pillow, but book covers, of course.

    You asked about my scrappy journal pages. They are paper sewn to paper only. I want people to be able to write on the pages, and fabric would only get in the way. The covers are fabric, but the pages are all paper. Thanks for asking, because I guess I didn't make that exactly clear, which I'll do when I show the second signature.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cappuccinoandartjournal.blogspot.comSeptember 28, 2015 at 12:29 PM

    Love the pillows -- VERY COOL. Now how about a tote bag and a scarf? I'd like those......lol

    ReplyDelete
  4. johannaSeptember 29, 2015 at 9:34 AM

    These are wonderful... i suppose i also would rather make book covers, as there are too many pillows in the house;) but i think the fabric medium is a good idea. i regret that People here in the Shops don´t have a clue about These materials. not sure i could get fabric medium here (i suppose it is different from other mediums... but might give them a try). and ordering this stuff from overseas is so expensive.
    btw, i most love the patch on the upper right!

    ReplyDelete

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