Felt Silhouette Pillows

One of the easiest ways to change out the decor in a room is by making new throw pillows.  A bright fabric or design can make a plain tan couch the rooms focal point.  Or can add a temporary holiday theme without spending a ton of money. 

I decided to do just that with my plain tan couches by adding some new pillows.  I love the look of a bold silhouette design, and decided to use that style for my pillows.  I have some fleur-de-lis decor in my living room, so that's the bold design I decided on.

Now...how do I get a good fleur-de-lis cut out of felt?  I could try to free hand it, but we all know that will turn out...wonky!  So I began the clip art hunt.  I found quite a few options that would have been OK, but it was too hard to print the images in the size I wanted.  So I did some more exploring and remembered one of my favorite tips for finding silhouette images: wing ding fonts.

If you don't know what a wing ding font is...get ready because this is gonna change your crafting life!  Wing dings are fonts where each character is a picture, not a letter.  So when you type 'A', you get a smiley face, or a flower, or in my case an amazing fleur-de-lis!

And from my experience the best place to get free fonts is at www.dafont.com .  I don't get anything for saying that, they really are my favorite free font resource and have tons of wing ding fonts.

Once I downloaded and installed The French font I was ready to go. 

I printed out my favorite wing dings to make a pattern on plain paper.

I chose my favorite two for the pillows and cut them out of chocolate brown felt.  (I saved the other two patterns for other projects)

Now for the slow part...applique the felt cut out onto a 17" square piece of fabric that will be the front of your pillow.  Very slowly sew all the way around your cut out as close to the edge as possible.  Since felt does not unravel, you don't need to worry about finishing the edge.  

Once the applique is on, have two options to finish the pillow.  If you are going to want to change out your throw pillows, finish the back with an envelope closure or a zipper to allow for easy removal.  If this is a forever pillow you can stuff it and sew the whole edge shut.

And there you go...a few simple steps to get really special throw pillows to spice up your home decor.  And the best thing is that the possibilities for this project are unlimited.  You can make Felt Silhouette Pillows for every season and every room in your house. 

You just have to Find the Time!  :)

{Note: the Fleur-de-Lis pillows featured in this post are currently for sale in my Etsy shop: By Studio 13 along with other great gift ideas!}

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