A little more Valentine's Day decor

In my last pillows post, I promised to share one last Valentine's Day-themed pillow cover that I was working on. I actually finished it up last week but just now got around to snapping some photos of it.

Again, I used some dollar store napkins for the cover itself, then sewed up a few red and white polka dot yo yos to adorn the front. (You can tell that's a heart, right?) I didn't even sew them down, just stuck them on there with some good fabric glue. The open side is simply tied shut with a few twill ribbons.

While this design wasn't my original plan, it was much simpler and less complicated than what I'd previously come up with. And when is simpler and less complicated ever a bad thing?

One last little item that I put together one night is this simple wooden "love" sign. When my "North Pole" sign came down it left the space above my vintage window looking bare.

With some scrap wood and paint, I now have a sweet little sign that can fill in that space. I may even leave it there after Valentine's Day!

pillows, pillows, pillows

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time decorating for Valentine's Day. I just don't go in for all the sparkly hearts and pink and fluff. Yes, I'll use red and hearts here and there, but sparingly and in an understated way.

However, in an attempt to make my house somewhat festive for the upcoming holiday (and because I couldn't keep my Christmas pillows around until spring), I decided to sew up some new pillow covers for my couch.

This lumbar pillow cover was made using a red and cream ticking stripe and a piece of drop cloth that I had. I bought the wood buttons on Etsy like 3 years ago or so, but waited to use them for just the right project.

I'm sure you've seen doily pillows popping up everywhere, so how could I resist making my own? I found half a dozen of these nice big doilies at my local thrift store and used dollar store cotton napkins for the cover. These are pretty easy to make. Just dot the back of the doily with some fabric glue to adhere it to the fabric, then once that's dry stitch around the edge and a couple of places in the middle to keep it secure. I think they look kind of romantic in a way.

This afternoon while my littlest one napped I whipped up this last cover from scraps in my stash. Once again the red ticking appears, along with some more taupe napkin fabric.

I really like how this one turned out, and it's definitely got more of a Valentine's Day vibe than the others.

The letters are just appliqued on with a small zig-zag stitch on the top layer and a straight stitch for the bottom layer. That taupe fabric is going to fray some over time, which is what I want.
Although... now that I'm looking at it from a distance, I wish I'd tipped the "o" the other direction. Dangit!

I've got one more chair needing a new pillow cover, which is in the works. But I'm afraid it's going to take a little while to finish. Hopefully before Valentine's Day actually arrives! I'll be sure and share as soon as it's done.

Valentine's Day Button Art

Do you ever get the urge to just make something, but you're not sure what? That happens to me every once in a while. Sometimes when I'm bored I just want to sit down and make something. Something easy, fast and satisfying. This happened to me the other day and, as luck would have it, I was able to gather up what I needed around my house to make a little Valentine's Day craft.

It took less than an hour and turned out pretty cute, if I do say so. All it took was an old frame (painted and distressed), fabric, hot glue to attach the fabric to the frame's backing, white glue, buttons and brads.
This little button art project was inspired by the monograms on canvas that my kids made for their teachers as Christmas gifts (tutorial found here).


I loved the first one so much that I ended up making another one. This one may go to my space for sale pretty soon.

Have you done any cute and easy Valentine's Day projects lately? I hope to have a few more to share soon!

Valentine's Day projects

My 5-year-old daughter loves to do "projects", and it's usually up to me to come up with them for her. She's very much an artist and loves to draw, write, color and paint. Recently, though, when she came to me for a project, I decided to see how she'd do with stitching. So I grabbed a scrap of canvas, a 5" embroidery hoop and some red floss. I drew a heart in the middle and then showed her how to do a basic running stitch. And off she went! She really loved it. She even woke up early from her nap that day because she was so excited to keep working on her "stitching". She only poked herself once or twice, and once she'd finished with the red outer heart she decided she wanted to add another heart inside that... and then another... and then a button! It took her a few days to finish, but once she was done she gave it to me and said I could do whatever I wanted with it.




This morning I decided to turn it into a doorknob hanger. I cut the canvas into a circle, then another from some scrap polka dot fabric. I stitched some jumbo ric rac to the edge of the canvas then sandwiched that between the two circles and sewed them together, leaving a hole for turning. After stuffing some poly fill and a little dried lavender inside I added a scrap of ribbon that matched beautifully and sewed it closed by hand. It would've been nice if I could've thought of something useful to turn her first project into, but she's pleased with what I came up with, and so am I.



This next project was done in a hurry Saturday evening before we had to go out of town at the last minute for 4 days. I was to host a preschool Valentine's Day party on Thursday but we wouldn't be getting home until Wednesday afternoon, leaving me very little time for decorating. I'd seen this idea and thought it was lovely, but didn't want to take the time to paint. So out came the felt and in an hour or so I'd made several garlands of hearts to hang around my dining room. Super duper easy, just a little time consuming with the cutting. But even that went pretty quick because all I did was cut 4" strips of felt, iron them in half and then cut half-heart shapes along the fold all along the length of the strip. I then had to iron the hearts flat, but sewing them together was a breeze. You just want to try and keep some tension on the thread when you're between hearts by pulling it gently up and away behind your machine until you've fed the next heart in to be stitched. (Did that make any sense?) Anyway, I like the effect and it didn't cost me a thing. (Too bad the photos are awful. Sorry.)

If you do this project, try different positions of the hearts along the string- all right side up; all sideways; alternating right side up and upside down; etc. I also think using white or cream would be really pretty.

Have fun and have a great Valentine's Day!