St. Patrick's Day Door Makeover

With a last name like "Collins" and two Irish Water Spaniels running around, we enjoy St. Patrick's Day!  February and March are not my favorite months of the year because everything outside is so drab here in Utah, so I like to brighten up my front door and my home with lots of decorations.  A few easy projects can really brighten things up!

Banner-

This is a simple project whether you can sew or not.  If you can, you can stitch the flags into a piece of bias tape.  If you can't, glue can be your best friend!

To make a pattern, I folded a piece of paper in half the long way and cut a straight line to make a triangle.  It ended up being almost the full 8.5" wide at the top and 11"long.

I traced this little foam shamrock with a pencil.

Then I filled in the traced area with a decent coat of white acrylic paint.  Maybe I should have used a darker green.  I already had the fabric (which is a cotton canvas) so I was making do.

Stitch the flags into the bias tape.  I started at the middle and went one way and then started in the middle again and went the other way.  That way my flags are evenly spaced and my glitchy sewing machine is showing the top stitches- not the garbled bottom!

Pillow-

The directions on how to make a pillow envelope are HERE.  For this I used burlap as a nod to a potato sack and then a piece of the same canvas that I used for the banner.  I traced another shamrock that I had to cut the shamrock.

Door Shamrock-

This is one of those projects that became a disaster.  I am not happy with my results, but it will have to do until I buy more glitter!  I made a freehand pattern for the shamrock and used a jig saw to cut it out of some scrap wood that I still had in the garage.  (Read- "That Parker hadn't gotten to yet. . ." 

I based painted it and then I was all set to use "Glitter Blast" paint on the front.  It did not work at all.  And I even followed the directions.  I am a very unhappy customer right now.  :(  So, then I sprayed the whole thing with clear polyurethane (I was outside, by the way.  Do NOT do this in your house!  Or by your car. . .) and sprinkled three different colors of glitter on it.  I ran out of glitter, so it is a little anemic, but I an always add more.  And who doesn't want more glitter?

Simple Pillow Cover

This is my little pillow project that I did this afternoon.  It was prompted by two events.  The first was that I learned a cool new technique to print on fabric and the second was that I finally painte this chair my favorite, cheery green color.  I just love spray paint.  This is Rustoleum, which is one of the easier paints to use because it has a larger spray button.

I had a 14"x14" pillow form, so I decided to cut one piece of my fabric in a 15.5" square and then I cut two pieces that were 15.5"x11".  Those pieces will make the back.  I just used scissors since rotary cutters have been outlawed in my house since my DH got stitches because of one.  (He doesn't know that I actually do have three. . . I just don't use them often!)

Here's my favorite part.  I cut a piece of fabric to 11.5"x8.5"- the same size as a normal piece of paper.  I cut a piece of freezer paper the same size.  I ironed the fabric onto the shiny side of the freezer paper and it went through my HP Inkjet Printer!!!!  How awesome is that???  I ironed the result to stabilize the ink after I peeled the freezer paper off.  A little trimming, and this is the result.

I laid out the printed fabric onto the decorator fabric and pinned it down.  I didn't do that the first time and ended up picking out all my stitches, so take my advice and pin it down.

I used a zig zag stitch on the widest setting to sew the two piece together.



Then I turned over one edge (15.5" side)  of each of the two back pieces.



I quickly stitched the edges of the back pieces.

Now we have to put it all together.  The front of the pillow goes face up.  Then I put a ribbon on so that I could tie the pillow to the chair.  The back pieces go on face down- with the hemmed edges in the middle.  Then sew around all the edges.

This shows all the layers sewed together.  I clipped the corners so that they would turn better.

Turn the whole thing right side out and stuff the pillow in.  Voila!  A cute little custom pillow that is esy to change for seasons.