With that said, it was awfully nice to have a good excuse to do a little sewing and crafting last week. Our awesome women's ministry E3 came up with the brilliant idea to have a Pinterest party with a Christmas in July theme! I was so excited about it that I stayed up 3 hours after one of Ella's midnight feedings going through my Pinterest boards and scheming about what fun thing I would make and take. With our budget still tight after my maternity leave, I knew I needed to come up with something I could do with supplies I already had and/or a very cheap run to JoAnn's/Hobby Lobby/Michael's. After the first two hours of scrolling through Pinterest on my phone, I decided to tweak a version of this pillow from Wit & Whistle. (I spent the last hour dreaming about what would go on my pillow).
For sewing the pillow case I used HGTV's great tutorial and just left out the step with the fringe. I love this tutorial because it gives such simple instructions for how much fabric to use if you want the pillow case to be removable. See how it's open on the back?
Then came the fun part! I didn't have a stencil, so I made a square text box in Microsoft Publisher (you can do it in any word processing program too) and played around with fonts until I found a look and a fit that I liked, then printed it out as an example. Since we were supposed to make Christmas crafts, I chose one of my favorite Christmas carols - It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. I lined out my pillow case in pencil (it took several tries), then started slowly free handing the lettering in pencil by looking at my printed template. After that I just went back over my penciled letters with my two fabric markers.
