Star Wars Fleece Pillow

This is the last (for now) version of the personalized pillows I've been making as gifts for the birthday parties my son has been attending.   I made a Make-Your-Own Pillow kit for a little girl in his class and a Dallas Cowboys Personalized pillow for a boy my son likes to talk sports with.  The friend having the party this weekend is a HUGE Star Wars fan.  I looked all over for a Star Wars patterned fleece, but couldn't seem to find anything.  That's when I decided to combine one of my favorite fabrics with one of my favorite techiniques.  

FLEECE + FREEZER PAPER STENCILING = A really cool pillow!

Isn't this cool!  The gold metallic paint looks great against the black fleece.

At first, I wasn't sure how well the stenciling would work on the fuzzy fleece, but it turned out fine.

SUPPLIES:  

•   Two pieces of coordinating fleece, each approx. 19"x25"
•   Heat'n Bond Lite Iron-on Adhesive
•   Small piece of coordinating fabric for name ( not fleece )
•   Polyfill stuffing  
•   Freezer Paper
•   Fabric paint and paintbrush

DIRECTIONS:

1.  Find the logo or image that you want to use for your stencil and trace it onto the papery side of the freezer paper.

I found a logo online, enlarged it and traced it on the freezer paper.

2.  Cut out your stencil using scissors or an exacto knife.  Make sure you save any middle pieces (like the centers of the A and R).  Iron your stencil waxy side down onto the fleece.  It only takes a couple quick passes with a medium iron to adhere it.  Make sure all the edges are securely adhered so the paint doesn't bleed through but DO NOT hold your hot iron down on the fleece for more than a few seconds at a time or it will start to melt the fleece and leave a mark.

Carefully ironed on and ready to paint.

3.  Next, use a brush to paint the fabric paint ( I found a cool metallic gold color ) onto the fleece.  I found it worked well to squirt some of the paint into the stencil, then spread it with my brush.  It also seemed to work best to use short brush strokes instead of longer ones that would pick up the fuzz from the fleece too much.  The fleece really soaks up the paint, so I did three coats of the paint until I got the coverage that I wanted.

Use short brush strokes and dab the paint on.

Three coats of fabric paint.

4.  Wait until the fabric paint is at least somewhat dry, then gently pull up the stencil.

The big "reveal" is my favorite part!!

5.  Allow the paint to dry completely, then continue assembling your pillow.  ( NOTE: Because the directions from this point on are exactly the same as the other pillows I did, I'm just putting the written directions.  See my posts HERE and HERE if you want to see the pictures for each step. )

6.  Trace the letters for the name onto the paper side of the Iron-on Adhesive.  (You'll want to flip the letters over backwards when tracing so the letters face the right way when you cut them out.)  Following the directions on the package, iron the Heat n Bond to the wrong side of your fabric for the letters.  Cut out the letters for the name.

7.   Carefully iron the letters onto the fleece.  (You'll want to be very careful not to leave the iron in one spot for more than a couple seconds or it will melt a mark into the fleece!!)  Then machine stitch around the letters to more securely attach them.  

8.  Using a marking pencil and a ruler, draw lines 3 1/2" in from each of the edges on one of your fleece panels.

9.  Keeping the wrong sides together and using the lines as a guide, sew around the outside of the pillow, leaving an opening to insert the stuffing.

10.  Stuff your pillow then sew closed the opening.

11.  Cut squares off of each of the corners.

12.  Cut a 1/2" fringe around the perimeter of the pillow, being careful not to cut into the seam.  Then tie each pair of strips to help "mix" the colors of the two panels. 

13.  That's it, you're finished!!  I'm so glad that I found out that the freezer paper stenciling will work on fleece.  Now, I'm not limited to the available fleece patterns,  I can stencil just about any kind of logo or image.

The finished pillow, front and back!