How to turn fabric from your pillows into beautiful artwork
Over the last two months I have been slowly decorating my new place and sometimes the exact piece of artwork I want to decorate my walls can’t be found. I will visit every local Home Goods or TJ Maxx in hopes of finding something in the colors I want, in the style I want and I can never find it. My living room colors are gray, white and silver. My couch is a dark slate gray color, my furniture is black and I have been adding lighter cream, white and silver colors to break up the room. When it came to wall art the first thing I wanted was a large canvas art piece in black and white of New York City. At IKEA I had found a great image of downtown Manhattan from before the World Trade Centers were built and I loved it. The difficult part was that the wall on either side of the art was bare. I wanted to put something on either side but I couldn’t find anything that would work. I needed something in the same color family, with a silver border or no border and with a pattern that wouldn’t compete with the beautiful NYC. I kept searching and couldn’t find anything that would work, until I went to IKEA and got the idea to turn some pillows that I had been using (which would obviously match the color scheme) and making them art!
All of my pillows are in the same color family and the patterns were all really complimentary to my over all living room decor. I went to IKEA and found some of their RIBBA frames with the same silver border as my larger canvas image. I knew that since I bought my original piece from there that these would work perfectly! The RIBBA frames come in all shapes and sizes from small to large, with larger white borders or smaller ones.
I picked the 19 ¾ x 27 ½” size frames and bought two. Each is $19.99 and they can also be bought online in case you don’t live near an IKEA.
Click here to view or order yours
So I grabbed this grey and white stitched pillow to use for both of my frames. I wanted the pieces of art on each side to match but not be identical. There is something fun about having pieces that are a bit different on each side. So for two frames you can use one pillow and it saved me a good amount of money doing it this one. One pillow cost me $20 from Home Goods and the two frames totaled $40 so I made two large pieces of art to hang for $60. It’s also easier if the pillow is a pillow case you can remove with a zipper, this way you can save the pillow that is inside and get a new cover for it if you’d like. These were removable covers so they were very easy to cut. I just used a pair of scissors and gut the zipper out and then cut all around the seem to turn the cover into two separate pieces. I made sure to take the inside border inside the frame out to measure and make sure each piece would fit nicely, which it did.
Don’t cut the fabric to fit the frame inside perfectly, leave some room so that you never have to worry about the fabric shifting inside of the frame. Pop all the pieces back into the frame and then put the back on and push down all the metal backing clips. Now I decided to NOT use the glass since I didn’t want the glare and since the NYC canvas art was not cover with glass either – I wanted all 3 pieces to match and be a matte finish so I did not use the glass outter piece, but you surely can.
This project only took about 30 minutes from start to finish. I also enjoyed doing it too, it was fun to see how something that I already owned could be turned into art and when it was all said and done, and the photos were on the wall I was so pleased. I think they look great and match perfectly but also add a touch of character to my main wall. Slowly but surely my living room is coming together and I have to say I get a ton of inspiration when I visit IKEA. Take a look around your house for random pieces of fabric to turn into art. Maybe it’s an old bed sheet, or even an old skirt with a great pattern you don’t mind cutting up. You can also visit your local fabric store to have some yards cut up that match your living room or bed room perfectly!
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