Bird Pillow

I've mentioned previously that I'm redecorating our room, using a red, black, and white theme.  I don't know what it is about those colors, and I know they're really popular these days, but I love how they all look together.  Between my tie pillow that I made and the cherry blossom painting, I've gotten started with the transformation, albeit slowly.

Last night, I experimented with another pillow.  I was inspired both by Janlynn-Sewmore's Wordy Bird pillow and by a pillow I'd seen at Walmart.

I knew I wanted to have a pillow with a bird, matching the color scheme I had chosen, and I loved the branches idea as well, but until I saw the Wordy Bird pillow and read the post, I wasn't really sure how to go about doing that.  I loved the simplicity of the whole project, and remembered that there are many ways to accomplish the same outcome.

I had originally bought some white and black patterned fabric for the main body of the pillow and some fun, flirty white fabric for the bird, branch, and leaves.  But once I adhered the white to the Heat n Bond (AMAZING stuff, by the way!) and cut the shapes out, I realized I didn't really like the design on top of the body of fabric.  I wanted subtle, but it was disappearing into it.  So I decided to go opposite of subtle.  I'd already made one mostly black pillow, but I decided to just go ahead with the second one.

I really wanted a bird on it, and I love the one on my header here on my blog that I took that and drew it out onto some cardstock to use as a template in cutting out the fabric.  I made up a pair of leaves, because I kinda figured the leaves in the header were a bit too complex for me for my very first time using Heat n bond, and wasn't sure how it would turn out, detail-wise.

After I ironed the design onto the pillow, I decided it was still lacking, so, inspired again by Janlynn's pillow, I cut a strip of the same fabric I'd used before to sew along the top and help add to it, and I cut out a flower from the fabric and Heat n Bond left over, and sewed a button into the center.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out!  And it goes nicely with the other pillows I have so far!!  The pillow with ties, as I showed before, and the other pillow is an envelope case I sewed to cover those really ugly pillows I'd bought before.

I really have GOT to come up with a better way to photograph my projects.  Because seriously, unmaking my bed to remove all the pattern from my comforters to show the pillows is kinda messy looking.


I linked!