I’ll Have a Blue (and red) Christmas

My first idea to bring the blue/red Christmas color scheme to life was a homemade pillow to sub in for this one:

Which sits in my entry hallway.  I wanted something crafty and etsy-looking….with an appliqué Christmas flower.  The problem is…I’m really not very crafty.  I can’t even sew.  But I hatched a plan to skin that cat in a different way, and it began with two $3 placemats from Target.  The whole placemats-as-pillow-covers thing has been done before, on many other blogs, so in no way can I take credit for that genius.  Nor do I wish to take credit for my first attempt at this method, because…well, I blew it.  You see, it turns out my plan was ill-conceived.  To create my pillow, I decided to put one placemat on top of the other, and use bonding (hemming) tape to seal three edges.  Then stuff my cover and bond the final edge.  Things were looking good at first, I easily bonded my left, right and top ‘seams’.   I filled the pillow with pillow innards and attempted to secure the last seam.  No dice.  Once the stuffing was inside, it was basically impossible to hold down the two edges of the placemats neatly and straight, and even more impossible to keep them (again, neatly and straight) in position when trying to iron the bonding tape.  Every attempt came up with extremely sloppy results, and I eventually threw in the towel.  It was not to be.  Here is a picture of my end product – which to you may not look that bad, but trust me, it was a sad sack.

Notice how I tucked under the entire bottom edge – which was to hide the fact that it was full of bubbled spots and sections that weren’t even bonded together.  Also the poinsettia (which I’ll explain later) is an illusion, just set on top, not attached.  Sad.  Sack.

So after this fiasco and failure (which may or may not have included a near-tears melt down wherein I snapped to Jeff -  because obviously this  was mostly his fault – “I can’t do this!  I have these ideas but I can’t execute!”  Why hello there, drama queen!  Nice to see you.) I walked away from the problem and let it marinate.  Until a few days later when it hit me – envelope closure.  You know what I’m talking about – when a pillow cover has a slit in the back for inserting the cushion instead of going in through an edge.  Ah yes, an envelope closure seemed like just the ticket.  Now, obviously I wouldn’t be able to create a true envelope closure.  Normally there would be a bottom flap, with a longer overlapping flap.  But I figured that I don’t really need for the back to look perfect.  Since this is a strictly decorative piece (displayed in a spot where it never gets moved) as long as the front looks kosher, then nobody needs to know what’s going on around the corner..

Woops!  Too soon.  Let me back up.   Here’s how the reboot of PPP (poinsettia pillow project) went down.

1.  Iron both placemats. 

2.  Place on top of each other, and insert bonding tape between them on each side.  Make sure to put the bonding tape as close to the edges as possible.  Follow bonding tape instructions to iron and secure. 

3.  Pick which side will be your back, and pull at the fabric in the middle, so you’re sure to only lift up one of the placemats.  Cut a slit through the back placemat, top to bottom. 

 

4.  Insert a spare pillow or other pillow stuffing that you have on hand. (Although having tried both, stuffing it with an actual pillow works best.  Which makes sense…a pillow that’s already a pillow will give you a nice pillow-y inner structure.  Got that?)  As you can see (above), I simply put the pillow I already had in the hallway inside, on undercover duty.

5.  Smile like the Grinch as you behold your dirty little secret.

6.   Think about how weird and manic Christina’s Grinch smile was.

7.  Flip over and tada!  Placemat to pillow transformation = complete. 

8.  Add appliqué or desired flourish.  I used a safety pin to fasten.

To assemble the appliqué poinsettia, I cut out three layers of felt – I used felt because I was going for that uber-crafty look.  Obviously other fabrics would also work.  After I had a leaf layer, and two petal layers, I used bonding tape between each to join together.

For the middle (stigma?) I picked up some random doo-dads at Michaels. 

I truthfully don’t know what you’re supposed to use brads for (see? A crafty person would know that), but I loved how I could easily press one through the felt and then open it’s backing to secure:

And here’s the product of round 2:

Homemade crafty pillow?  I did it.  It’s a Christmas miracle.

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