Oh, deer!

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Mark and I had another much appreciated low-key weekend, which meant I was able to get things done AND blog about it!

If you follow me on Pinterest, you can tell that I'm crazy and pin way too many things. I do try to stay realistic and pin things that I would someday like to try. I knew when I pinned this image that I would be adding it to my project list:

It's the Blooming Reindeer Pillow that was previously sold for $88 at Anthropologie. 

If you look closely, the deer is actually comprised of needlepoint, but I wasn't going for an exact copy, just something similar because I liked the look. 

This was the site that the image was pinned from...

...And this was their final product:

Like the bad student I am, I didn't even bother reading the 'how-to' on the site where I found this and instead I just used the Anthropologie pillow as inspiration and I started off on my own. 

I'm always checking out Ikea's pillow section and I picked up two grey and white striped pillow covers ($3 each, I believe) about a year ago for our house. You know I love stripes, so I found it was easy to work them into our decor. 

I then purchased two different fabric patterns at JoAnn about two months ago intending to use them to make a valance in my bathroom. Since then, plans have changed so I had some extra fabric laying around. Once I got to thinking, I realized I could use a striped pillow cover and the fabric I already had to make this pillow.

I neglected to take photos of the process, but basically I purchased some double sided fusing cloth from Hobby Lobby in the fabric section. Then I free handed the deer silhouette from the photo on my phone. If you read the original blog post, they link to a print out so you can easily transfer it to your fabric. I like to make things more difficult than they have to be, apparently! I cut out the pattern from the fabric and then traced and cut out the fusing cloth to match. I followed the instructions that came with the fusing cloth and ironed it to the striped pillow cover. Wherever there was overlap, I used my sharp sewing shears sort of like an exacto knife and carefully removed the fusing cloth that was showing. Then I used some thread I had on hand to stitch the edges for some extra detail. Ta-da, that's it!

In one day for relatively no cost I went from this:

To this:

Mark is still undecided about my deer-head pillow, but I love it! It was a relatively easy project and it was even better since I had almost everything on hand. 

If you're interested in something like this or similar, message me and I'd be happy to talk details! :)

Have a great week!

......................................................................................

One more thing! Please be sure to check out my Etsy shop! I've added lots of things, tweaked some things, and lowered prices on many of my handmade custom items. I hope you can find something you like and I always welcome your feedback. Thanks so much!!!