DIY - Revamped Pillows with Imperial Trellis Print

I love Kelly Wearstler's style. An award winning interior designer, she's done projects all over the world and one of her famous patterns, Imperial Trellis, can be seen as wallpapers, fabrics and even clip boards and trash cans.

I've been slowly putting together our living room area and quickly fell in love with her Imperial Trellis II print in Java after seeing this photo:

{Uploaded by Suzie on DecorPad.com}

But of course, the fabric is way way WAY out of my price range, the cheapest I could find it was $105.99 a yard. I could have bought the pillows here or here from one of these fabulous Etsy sellers and in hindsight that probably would have been the best way to go (Sometimes DIY projects take quite a bit more time than expected to complete!).

But since I had a few things I could make pillows with lying around the apartment, I decided to make them myself. I used a white tablecloth (one of the same ones I used for my balcony curtains) bought from Ebay several years ago for $7-$10 each. I also had 4 of these blue pillows.

First, I took the trim off the pillows:

Then I cut up my tablecloth into 18.5 inch squares (to allow 1/4 inch for seams).

I then purchased some Americana acrylic paint in Bittersweet Chocolate, some Fabric Painting Medium and a little stencil sponge tool (came in a two pack) from the craft store. The Fabric Painting Medium can be used with any acrylic paint to make it usable for fabrics. You just have to let the fabric dry for 24-48 hours after painting and then heat-set it for 30 seconds and you're done! It's even washable!


Using the Imperial Trellis design, I used 6 sheets of 100lb card stock and made a template.


Then I painted in the design. For the first pillow I just painted right over the template and then quickly discovered that the paint was moving around ever so slightly so I had to go back and fix a lot of it. For the rest of the pillows, I lightly traced the template design onto them with a pencil and painted them in with a brush.

I decided to use white for the backs because painting took quite a bit of time. Since I used a tablecloth that was thick, the blue pillows underneath don't show through, and neither do the lumps!

Ta da!

Cost Breakdown:

4 Pillows - reused
1 White tablecloth - re-purposed (you can get them for $7-10 on Ebay)
Acrylic Paint x 2 - $1.29 each
Fabric Painting Medium - $1.99
Foam Brush - $1.97
100 lb Cardstock - Already had for a school project but I bought it at Kinko's for 20 cents a sheet

Total:
$6.54!

Doing this project from scratch would run about $15-20 + four pillows.

Once again: