Stocking Pillows–tutorial & a giveaway!

This is a re-post of a tutorial for my Pottery Barn knock-off pillows that appeared on Craft Gossip in November.

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Pottery Barn has terrific pillows, no doubt about it. However, they also seem to be rather fond of their pillows, based on the price they put on them! For example, their Knit Stocking Lumbar Pillow cover is $49.

Yep, just the cover—pillow not included!

I actually visited the store (for the second time in my life) to get a closer look at this pillow. It’s SUPER cute, but really there isn’t anything too difficult about the construction or design.

So…I decided to make my own!

The little knit stockings are (obviously) what make the whole pillow. I visited a couple of local thrift stores and bought sweaters that had small-scale cable patterns.

And what else? Skirts! I could have gone to a fabric store and bought off-the-bolt fabric for the pillow slips. But I’m lazy; I was already AT the thrift store!

Pillow inserts came from IKEA. The FJDRAR inserts are 16” x 24” and cost a whopping $3 each.

I drew a stocking shape on a scrap of tissue paper for my pattern. I pinned my pattern so the bottom hem of the sweater would become the top of the stocking—less finishing work that way.

Pin the wrong sides of each stocking together, stitch around the edges (by hand or machine), and voila! Three little knit stockings.

I used another scrap of sweater material to make the stocking hangers, but you could use a loop of ribbon or yarn or twine.

To make the pillow slips, you want to add 1” to the width of your pillow form (1/2” on each side for a seam allowance), but about 4” to the length, to allow for the hem and the buttons. Here’s a tip, though—if you’re using the IKEA pillow forms, they aren’t very “full,” so I actually didn’t add any extra for seam allowances—that allows me to stuff the pillows a little fuller.

If you are using a skirt like I did, make sure to take advantage of the already-finished hem for one side of your pillow, and you can even use one of the side seams for your top seam. (Don’t forget that you don’t need that 1/2” seam allowance then. Don’t worry if you mess up; pillows are very forgiving.)

It’s easier to stich on your stockings and trim if you leave either the top or bottom seam unfinished. Lay everything out and be generous with your pins! I stitched the trim down first, and then I “tacked” the stockings in place by stitching back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth for about four stitches at about four places around the stocking (right near the edges). This could easily be done by hand as well. And the trim? Well, I gave strong consideration to using hot glue!!

Isn’t it amazing how the colors changed mid-project?? Must be Christmas Magic!

The last step in completing your pillow is to add the buttons on each side. If you want to be able to re-use the pillow insert, you can use real buttonholes, or you can just stitch the buttons on through both layers of the pillow cover! And what you choose to do may depend on what kind of day you’re having… (guess what I did??)

Ta-da! Here’s my Pottery-Barn knock-off.

But why stop there? There are a whole lot more options when you’re making them up as you go along! I loved this combination of red with a subtle gray plaid (from another skirt)…

…or you can make it even easier by using a pre-made pillow cover (this red velvet one was $7 from IKEA) and just dress it up with the stockings! (See the candy cane? these are functional, baby!)

And maybe you can add some jingle bells since this one didn’t get buttons!

I had fun making the three pillows, but quite honestly, the gray one doesn’t go anywhere in my house! But I thought maybe one of YOU might like it!

If so, simply leave a comment here! Tell me…what one gift would you most like to GIVE this year if you could? Let me know, and you’re entered to win. Giveaway will end Thursday, December 15. Please leave your e-mail if you don’t have one linked up!

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Linking up here:

Coastal Charm’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday	Topsy Turvy Tuesdays
	Someday Crafts’ Whatever Goes Wednesday
Hookin’ Up with House of Hepworths	No Minimalist Here’s Open House Thursday
Friday Remodelaholic
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Sisters of the Wild West
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
	I Heart Naptime
Beyond the Picket Fence’s Under $100 Party	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
	My Repurposed Life

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Transparency Transfers

I’m a lot slower getting this posted than I had intended…sorry about that. But here I am now, with the BIG SECRET TRANSFER METHOD (no, not really) that I promised when I posted about my French Chocolate Bar Stools.

I have had lots of fun transferring vintage French ads (courtesy of the Graphics Fairy) to various pieces of furniture, such as the French Chocolate table, Café table, the Postcard table, the Black Coffee table and French Twist table. I used an overhead projector for all of those, and I really love the look I was able to get.

However….

…I had to choose my graphics very carefully, as I am limited in the amount of detail I can recreate with my paint brush. Plus…I simply don’t have the patience to do anything really teeny tiny, so that’s why I focused on tables!

So I wanted a way to simply transfer images without necessarily having to break out the paint brush. I tried Mod Podge transfers (there’s a good explanation here), but I had mediocre results. I shelled out the money for Citra Solv, and had good results—some of the time (this method is explained here). So I got discouraged.

But…the Citra Solv transfer PLUS the overhead transparency method gave me a new(ish) idea.

When I wanted to use my overhead projector, I had to print my graphic out on paper and take it to a copy store to have the transparency made. Ink jet printers (which is what most homes have) deposit ink on the surface of a sheet, so it will smear off if you touch it. Laser printers/copiers do something like injecting the image into the sheet, so they are permanent. (Yeah, I’m just shooting from the hip for this explanation. Just go with me here.)

Citra Solv transfers work because the Citra Solv re-dissolves the ink on your page, allowing it to re-deposit onto your project. (The issues I had with Citra Solv is that it DID NOT always re-dissolve the ink—maybe some toner cartridges are getting better??)

so one day I had an “aha” moment—if I printed on a transparency sheet using my ink jet printer, the ink was already “dissolved.” So…could I just transfer an image without any special solvents?

Well, let’s see, shall we??

Here’s a Citra Solv transfer onto a painted surface.:

…and an unpainted surface:

Here’s an ink jet transfer onto a painted surface:

…and an unpainted surface:

Pretty hard to tell the difference, huh?

I was majorly excited after this little experiment.

Like my cute little test board??

But then….I got stuck.

See, the real difference is that if you’re transferring from a laser copy, THAT ink is NON-water soluble (thus, you have to use the Citra Solv). If you’re transferring from an ink jet copy, that ink IS water soluble and it will continue to be so. If you wanted to wash your project at some point—the image would come off. If you try to use something like, say, Minwax Polycrylic (which is water-based) to protect your image—you’re going to end up with a big smeary mess which will cause you conclude that your grand idea is a huge failure and you might just hide your project board in the laundry room for the next four months.

Yep. Really.

But then one day (four months later) a new idea might finally occur to you—which you, being MUCH SMARTER than I am—probably already figured out!!

If you do an ink jet transfer, you have to use an oil-based protective coat.

That’s all there is to it. No water = no smeary ink!

For the stools, I used Minwax Hand-rubbed polyurethane, and I didn’t have any smearing problems. Such a simple solution, but seriously—it drove me nuts!!

Now, recently there have been some other projects in blog-land that have transferred ink-jet images using freezer paper. It’s the same principle, so you can use whatever substance you happen to have one hand (I promise I came up with this idea independently of those, and I have the dates on my pictures to prove it! )

The two slight advantages that I see in using transparency sheets are these:

1. After you’re done with your transfer, you can wash the ink residue off of the transparency, making it completely reusable.
2. Since the sheets are—you know, transparent—you can more accurately place your image on your project.

So here’s a quick run-down of the steps I use for a “transparency transfer,” using a cool old bread board for my project.

1. Slightly dampen your project to facilitate the ink transfer. I generally wiped it with a damp cloth, and then waited a minute or two for it to be nearly dry.

2. Print a reverse image of your graphic (I copied my images into Microsoft Word. Click on the image, and a new tab called “Picture Tools” will appear at the top of the page. Click on the tab and then on the “Rotate” option, and “Flip Horizontal”) directly onto an overhead transparency (you can buy individual sheets from a copy center; no need for a whole box). Tape it in place.

3. Using the back of a spoon (I have also used a bench knife), rub the image ALL OVER and HARD to transfer as much ink as possible.

4. Voila! You have achieved image-transfer-nirvana. If you want to protect your image, let it dry fully and then give it a coat (or two) of a non-water-based polyurethane.

That was a very long-winded explanation, so congratulations if you haven’t completely lost interest yet (image transfer----whaaa?? who cares??)

What do you think? Is this something you might try? Or is it so simple as to be…stupid, and everyone already knew about it but ME??

Note: The super-slick surface of the bar stools did not “take” the transfer quite as well as the softer wood of the cutting board, so I used a black Sharpie to darken up the image in places.

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This project was featured at Craft Gossip and My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia.

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Linking up to these great parties:

Coastal Charm’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday	Topsy Turvy Tuesdays
Domestically Speaking’s Power of Paint	Someday Crafts’ Whatever Goes Wednesday
Hookin’ Up with House of Hepworths	No Minimalist Here’s Open House Thursday
Friday Remodelaholic	2805
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Primitive & Proper	I Heart Naptime
Beyond the Picket Fence’s Under $100 Party	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
Mod Vintage Life	Redoux
Thrifty Décor Chick	Stylish Once Again
The Graphics Fairy	My Repurposed Life

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Theatre Room Knock-off

The morning I found out I had been selected to compete in Crafting with the Stars, I frantically started flipping through the pages of the Ballard Designs catalog I had in my magazine basket, looking for an idea for my “knock-off.”

When I came upon this page…I knew I had my project.

One of my sisters has a super fun family room that is painted black with a filmstrip wallpaper border and several of those cardboard movie-character cut-outs standing around. Knowing that I happened to have her name for our family’s Christmas gift exchange, I decided she needed a little more movie “bling” for her walls!

The cost for this project was about $30, compared to over $300 if you bought all these pieces from Ballard! Here’s what I used:

• One 4’ x 8’ of quarter-inch luaun. Any smooth piece of wood/plywood would do as well.

Clapboard: one piece 11” x 12”; two pieces 1” x 12”

Theatre sign: 30” x 10”

Ticket sign: 12” x 24”

Star: 18” square

Movie reels: 24” square; 18” square; 12” square (two each)

• One 1” diameter dowel
• About 7’ of narrow molding
• Stencils of some sort (I cut mine on a Silhouette)
• Various paint (silver, gold, metallic black, off-white, black, red, tan)
• One binding post
• Miscellaneous screws, painter’s tape, etc.

I cut all of my signs using a table saw or a jigsaw.

Thankfully I have a very good friend who also has much better tools than I do; at his shop we used a bandsaw to cut out the movie reels. TIP: Use a screw to hold the front and back pieces of the reels together, so you can cut them out at the same time. This can also be done with a jigsaw, but your circles may wobble a little!

Yes, I know this because I cut the largest inner circles of the big reel with a jigsaw (after drilling a pilot hole first so I had a place to start). Forstner bits were used to cut the smaller circles, but they only go so big! So yes, my circles may wobble a bit.

I used layers of paint to give the effect of metal reels. It was fun to play with gold, silver, bronze, etc. to get the look I wanted.

I cut my 1” dowel into one-inch sections to separate the front and back pieces of the reels. There is generally one center piece and three or four pieces around the circumference for stability. I liked the three-dimensional look far better than just a flat circle on the wall!

I designed all my sign lettering on the Silhouette Designer. I used a combination of stenciling (painting in the open space where your lettering should go) and reverse-stenciling (painting over vinyl or cardstock lettering, and then removing that lettering to expose the unpainted surface underneath) to paint all the words on my signs.

I didn’t use just any numbers on the ticket…I used my sister’s anniversary!

I used painter’s tape to mark off the stripes on the Ticket sign, and I “pounced” the red paint on to get clean lines.

The ticket sign really came together once the curved corners were cut out. I traced around a circle to get the look I wanted, and then I cut the corners out with a jigsaw. I hand-painted the border on as the last step (well…the last step before distressing and glazing, anyway).

I framed the theatre sign with some narrow molding I cut and glued directly to the Theatre board. It should have taken just eight 45-degree angle cuts for the trim…it took me about 17! I was glad I had bought a little extra for “just in case.”

The clapboard was a fun little project. I cut the ends of the two 1”x12” pieces of wood at an angle using a miter saw (a handsaw and a miter box would work just as well). This is necessary so that the clappers will actually open! I taped them together on the back so the angle of those little chevron stripes would match up perfectly.

The bottom of the clapper strip is glued directly to the board; the top strip is attached with a specialty fastener called a “binding post.” I couldn’t find one at Home Depot, but Lowe’s has them (it cost about $0.80).

The star was the brainchild of my tool-handy friend! I printed out a star from my computer, and then I placed the top point of the star at the top center point of my board. Then I used a yardstick to extend the lines on the star onto my board—that way there was no tricky angle-measuring! I cut it out with my jigsaw as well.

It is difficult to tell from the photographs, but the little movie camera is actually on a separate 4” circle that I painted and then glued to the star. Just another way to add dimension and interest to the piece.

Whew! There you have it…the complete theatre room set.

I didn’t wait until Christmas to give my sister her present. I didn’t think it sounded like much fun to read about it on my blog and not get to see it in person! So when I saw her this past weekend, I gave her a “sneak peak” of my Crafting with the Stars post and brought out all the pieces while she was reading.

It was great fun! I think she enjoyed celebrating “Christmas in October.”

I know I did!

Thanks for wading through this very long tutorial with me! ********************************************************

This project featured at House of Hepworths.

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Linking up here and The DIY Show Off.

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