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Hello! I'm Suzannah, a serious DIYer and mom of two little ones. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, sewing and crafty projects, real food recipes, and de-stressing goals.
I believe you can love your home just the way it is, AND have the power to design and make big changes to make it better.
I'm also the author of DIY Wardrobe Makeovers!

Great appliqué technique, and fresh new pillows for spring

Fun project I finished over the weekend--I just love this anchor appliqué I found so much, I had to use it again after I did that anchor appliqué tee tutorial! I'm having fun with preppy, classic colors for spring. (As you may have seen in a sneak peek on my Instagram!)

I had some navy fine wale corduroy that I got at JoAnn but had nowhere to use it... I loooove the fun navy color but couldn't find the right place in the house, although it's pretty good for home dec since it's so densely woven it looks like cotton velveteen. So, I figured, time to switch out the pink velveteen pillows we've had on the bed and go for navy and white. Love doing that with bedding!

I sewed the anchor appliqués, cut out of a nice white twill with a stripey ribbed texture, onto the front pieces of my pillows before I sewed the zippers on and sewed them together. I used a technique very similar to what I did on the tee, but I used lightweight iron-on interfacing to reinforce the letters (and to make the white less see-through). Rather than use spray adhesive to attach them to the corduroy, I used some Fabric Fusion Peel & Stick Tape, which I've never used before for anything, actually! You can see in the pic below, I tore off short pieces and used them to anchor the straight lines of the appliqué down. Kollabora sent me this tape stuff for a project for my book, and I'm glad I got to try it out now! Super easy, just unroll and tear or cut, then pull off the wax paper backing. And... adhere. (I did this rather than mess with a bunch of pins to hold the appliqué down as I zigzagged it on the pillow front.)

Once I sewed the appliqués down, I trimmed the interfacing away. This was not as easy as I'd hoped... next time, I'll cut it to the exact size, or iron it on before cutting out the anchors! Aside from that, these went together great; the heavy corduroy was perfect for soft but sturdy pillow covers. Ta-da!!
DIY anchor pillows-021
DIY anchor pillows-024

Pretty fast, and very easy! Now, to freshen up the rest of the room...

I have some preppy grey and white striped bedding from west elm, but that might be a little much! And just bought more gold mirrors to put up somewhere in the bedroom, too. I love decorating bedrooms, but I guess I'm a more than a little indecisive. ;)

12 comments

  1. I love it! The gray, blue, and gold is such a soothing palette for a bedroom, very spot on. I don't think the bedding would be too much, but it's best to try it out and take a picture of each even if it means remaking the bed a couple of times. :)

    It's always better to have too many options than too few!

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  2. I love this. My boyfriend and I were just talking about redecorating our bedroom (on a budget) and this is fantastic inspiration. We both attended a maritime college and our initials are S & J as well. :)

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  3. I just so happen to looooooove navy! Especially in combination with white and gold.
    And those pillows turned out beautifully!
    I have a question: Do you have some sort of code on your blog to automatically resize all your images to the same width?
    Because I had that on my blog until I realized, the preset resizing slightly screwed up the quality of the pictures. I am pretty certain your photos are of pretty good quality (camera-wise) and lately I feel some of them look a little more pixelated than others. Your first two photos look a lot crisper than the bottom two. Maybe it's my laptop, but maybe it's some sort of code.
    I was just wondering about that...

    Can't wait to see more projects :) Perhaps there is another refashion swap on the way?

    best wishes :)
    Marie

    http://vonmri.blogspot.de

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    Replies
    1. OMG, thanks for letting me know! I've been resizing them manually--oops!! Just re-inserted them full res. Thanks!!

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  4. I love how they turned out!

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  5. Love the anchor throw pillows.

    They're like manly sailor tattoos...only cozy!

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  6. These pillows are great and I think they look awesome with the bedding and headboard (I love tufted headboards!). I've only done a handful of appliqué projects, but I usually use Wonder Under or Steam-A-Seam Double Stick. I'll have to give the tape a try next time. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Gorgeous - those pillows look great!!

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  8. the pillows look great! I really like the color combo with the rest of the bedroom.

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  9. I used to have a slight obsession with anchors... love these pillows!

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  10. I love how this masculines up the bedroom a little bit. :-) The change is cute!

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  11. Love this project!! I have been working on some pillows for our house, and it's such an easy and fast way to inject some personality!

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