Southern Color: Burlap Christmas Pillow

This time of year has my creative juices flowing! I feel like I will continue to decorate and craft stuff until Christmas eve ~ You can never have too many decorations!

I had some leftover fabric from my Burlap Tree Skirt, so I decided to make decorative Christmas pillows! When I say decorative, that means these pillows serve no other purpose than to look cute!

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To start: I went into Microsoft Word and typed up the phrase I wanted to stencil onto my pillows. I used the "Stencil" font in a size 120. I printed it out onto Letter sized paper. Then I covered the entire page in packing tape to make it more sturdy.

Using an Exacto knife, I cut out each letter. This was incredibly time consuming! So turn on a Christmas movie because you'll be here for awhile!

Once the stencil was ready to go, I began on the burlap. I cut the red burlap into 11 x 13 inch rectangles. I then folded over all the edges (about 1/2 inch).

(sorry for the bad pictures ~ but we have zero over head lighting in our living room)

Once the rectangles were cut out, I stenciled on my Christmas phrase.

I used a black fabric paint from Michael's.

Then I set aside the burlap to dry while I worked on the other pieces of the project. To make the ruffles on either side of the pillow, I cut 4 inch wide strips that were 20 inches long. Fold the strip in half so that it is 2 x 20 inches. Run a thread loosely through the bottom. Then pull the thread to create a ruffle. Pin the ruffles inside the front & back of the pillow. Sew all but 1 side of the pillow, then stuff. Because the stuffing will come through the burlap, I made simple pillow inserts using leftover fabric from another project.