Freezer paper stencil on pillow tutorial

I have had a few questions about some of the pillows on my couch, so I thought I would share some tips with you on how to make some fun pillows for your own house. My goal was to do a whole month of pillows and feature one each week, I am going to try to stick to my plan, but I am already struggling getting getting the first one up. First I had major issues with my sewing machine, and then my printer started acting up. Neither of the two are fixed, but I borrowed a sewing machine from my mom, and I just used the printer the way it was... I will look at it later. (You will see in my the following pictures the problems I had with my printer.) Anyway.... here is the first pillow of the month. I wanted to do this one first because I think this would make a awesome Christmas gift for Grandparents. Here we go...

You will  need the following supplies.

• freezer paper (can be found at most grocery stores)
• paint
• paint brush
• something to cut your stencil out with, scissors will work fine, but I prefer to use a x-acto knife to make the intricate cuts.
• marker
• printer
• a photo of your subject
• fabric
• sewing machine
• needle and thread
• Poly-Fil

1) Choose your picture. I snapped this picture of Oscar the other morning, if you have a more willing participant have them stand to the side so that you have the shape of their shoulder's to work with as well.

2) As you can see my printer didn't want to print any magenta, but that was ok for this project. You can outline your object that you want to cut out in black permanent marker to see it better, but this step is not necessary if you can see it ok under your freezer paper. (Like I said earlier, I had to work with what Oscar was giving me that morning, so I had to improvise with the shoulder placement. If I was able to capture a photo of him from the side I would trace his shoulder's and chest as well, but I just drew them in for this project.)

3) Lay a piece of freezer paper SHINY SIDE DOWN on top of your stencil and cut it out.

4) Your should have two pieces at this point.

5) Lay your freezer paper SHINY SIDE DOWN onto your piece of fabric where you would like the image to appear. Iron directly on top of the paper. The heat from the iron will adhere the freezer paper to your fabric creating a stencil to work with.

6) Paint directly on top of the fabric and freezer paper, I like to work my way in from the stencil so that I don't pull up any of my edges.

7) While the paint is still damp, carefully pull back the freezer paper starting at one corner.

8) Once your paint has completely dried, turn your pieces together so that the right sides are facing each other. Sew your pillow together leaving a small opening at the bottom to stuff your pillow.

9) Turn your pillow right side out

10) Add your batting to your pillow, and hand stitch the hole closed.

I made one for myself that matched our living room, and I also made one for my mom on plain white duck cloth.

I also added a little tag along side of each pillow with Oscar's name and the year.

My plan is to do one of these for John and myself as well, and continue to do one each year so we can see how much we have changed.

I really think this is such a nice gift for grandparents, gather all the grandkids together and get a profile shot. If you have older grandkids, they would probably love to get in on the action too and help paint their own pillow. A bunch of these on the couch with each grandkids silhouette would be lovely.

I am already working on my pillow for next week, so stay tuned...