Birthday Present

Okay, so I felt like a horrible wife not having a present for my husband... so this afternoon while my son was at school, I made a pillow cover for each child to give to my husband. I was pleased with how they came out... and to top it off, the match the idea I have for our duvet cover (if I ever find time to work on something for myself).

I hope to someday make a duvet cover with men's dress shirts. I love the strips, plaids and blues of so many dress shirts that I thought it would be nice for our bedroom... you know, something I like and something masculine that my husband will like. I hope with the New Year, I'll get a chance to start on this project. For now, the pillows were something obtainable.

I used two men's dress shirts that I have collected from various Thrift store outings. I swapped the patterns on the front and back of each pillow so that the two pillows go together. So the fabric on the front of one is the fabric used on the back of the other. I also used the button front for the opening of the pillow cover. Such a breeze to make and soooo cute! I'll be making more of these... maybe even for one of my stores.

I printed the picture on my less than stellar printer. A low quality printer gave me the exact look I was going for - kind of worn. I printed it on some fabric paper I had obtained a while back. But you could easily just iron some freezer paper to the back of muslin. I'll probably do that next time as then I can control the quality of the fabric.

The longest part of this project was cutting the shirts apart. I was making 18 inch pillows, so I had to be sure that I cut each shirt perfectly to get in 18.5 inch square out of both sides. It was a bit challenging - but well worth the extra effort.

I also had visions of the kids stamping their little hand print on the corner of each of their pillows in black ink - but, since this was a last minute idea... that isn't going to happen.

I'm hopeful that my husband will enjoy these. I think I might make a few for downstairs for Christmas while we have guests here. The great things about these is that they are just covers, so they can be removed and put away until next year or swapped out with something else. I'm addicted to pillow covers now - watch out!