Houndstooth Sophia Carry-All

Do you recognize that fabric?  It's my brown and black houndstooth!  My mom used it in part to make this bag, the Amy Butler Sophia Carry-All. 

Of course, the bag turned out great, since my mom is awesome at this kind of stuff.  It's so fun to see my fabric turning into actual things.  Making something out of fabric I have designed is officially on my to-do list, again, but this time I'd like to design the fabric with a specific project in mind.  Ideas?

New Bird and Houndstooth Throw Pillows

Decorative pillows can be so expensive to buy, and sometimes it's hard to find exactly what you want.  I love being able to customize the look of my home by creating my own pillow covers.  The task can be a scary if you have never tried it before, but if you can sew a straight line you can make pillow covers.  This isn't a tutorial so much as a lookie-what-I-did post, but I think it can be inspiring nonetheless. 

For the pillow on the right, I used most of the fat quarter linen canvas print of my large-print brown/black houndstooth fabric and was able to get a 16"x16" cover from that, with a little bit to spare (my hope is that I can use the remainder to make a new wallet).  The back is just plain black cotton fabric that I had on-hand from my cherry blossom pillow covers.  I also did my first zippered pillow cover with this, using this cheesy video riddled with product placement as a surprisingly instructional guideline.

I got a yard of KAS's Oslo Amethyst home decor fabric (the bird print) for my birthday a few months ago, and I have been dying to use it for something.  Our sectional came with three big pillows, and I decided it was finally time to replace them.  I found 20"x20" down pillow inserts for a great price at IKEA, and I found the backer fabric as a remnant at Joann. 

I was able to get three 18"x18" covers out of the fabric I had, and I still have a bit of that left as well.  For the closure on this pillow, I did two slightly overlapping pieces on the back and two big buttons.

I just love how much it has brightened up my couch area!  Plus, I got to pull in some of the purple accents I have been slowly working into my family room since I painted the hallway purple.  The color of the hall (and hopefully soon, laundry room) is actually pretty close to the purple in the pillows.

Next on the list?  A pillow for the new bench in our bedroom.  This one is a really fun shape and a predictably "me" print.  It will also have a zipper.  Would anyone be interested in seeing a tutorial for that?

Houndstooth Fabric Test Swatches

I love getting mail from Spoonflower.  I designed a simple houndstooth pattern for my mom, so we could do custom colors of brown and black.  I also printed a fat quarter of the pattern large-scale on linen canvas to make either a pillow for my couch or a new wallet, or both if I am lucky.  I also tried out a few other fun color combos in small-scale.  Two of the color combos had to be tweaked, so I don't have the samples of them yet.  However, the Orange Dream version turned out really well the first time:

This is an 8"x8" test swatch on the new Kona cotton.  Love it!

This last photo is the brown/black combo in a full yard printed in the small scale.

I am really excited to get started on some projects with my new fabric!  These designs are also available to the public for order.  You can get brown/black large scale, brown/black small scale, orange/white, jade/grey, and aqua/butter.  I also got some other test swatches that I'll be showing off early next week.