frog dog studio: Cozy Up With This Day of the Dead Pillow!--Using the October Limited Edition Kit

Good day, friends! I wanted to share with you another idea on how to use some of the materials from the October Limited Edition kit. I have to tell ya'll that I have had a blast creating with this kit :) Now I'm not much of a seamstress, or sewing person, or whatever you would call that, but every once in a while I get the strong urge to sew something. So I thought it would be fun to create a pillow using the super cool Day of the Dead stencil from the kit.

The first thing I did was cut down a piece of muslin, and using my beloved Gelli plate (from last month's kit) I went to work monoprinting a background design. I don't like "scary" Halloween type of stuff so I thought it would be neat to make this sort of girly and colorful. I used bright colors like Quinacrodone Magenta and other shades of pink, as well as a variety of stencils and Catalyst tools. When I was finished printing the muslin looked like this.

It's important for me to say here that I just used regular acrylic paint on the muslin. I later learned about GAC 900, which when mixed with acrylic paints and heat set makes it very easy to work with on fabric, as well as makes it washable. (Thanks, Martha for the helpful tips!) So this pillow is only for decoration. When the fabric was all dry, I laid down the stencil on the fabric and traced the design with a white fabric pen. However, I quickly realized that the pen wasn't standing out enough on the design so I had to head back to the drawing board on that one!

So after digging around in my stash (and not finding any other colored fabric pens) I decided to stencil the design on instead using black paint. So I grabbed one of the dabbers from the kit and some paint and went to work. I was liking where this was going....

Now to really get to work! I wanted this to have a special touch, so I decided to hand embroider some of the details using colorful threads. I did find this very relaxing and was able to work on it while hanging out with the kids one evening. I really need to get a thimble or something....

Everything was all embroidered and it was time for another crazy trip to Hobby Lobby to find some coordinating fabric. Have I mentioned how unpleasant it is taking a 2 year old and 5 year old fabric shopping? LOL Anyway, I found this really cute fabric.

I won't share with you the epic disaster pics of me sewing the wrong fabric sides together (it's hard to focus when your kids are climbing all over you and pulling on the fabric you're trying to sew!--note to self: wait until bedtime before attempting another sewing project!) Here is a pic of the pieces sewn together CORRECTLY! Once that was accomplished I stuffed it with Polyester Fiberfill and hand stitched the opening closed.