Friday, January 13, 2012

Creatively repurposed gift #1: Personalized iron-on label pillow


Inside of my handmade gift challenge, I secretly challenged myself to make my brother a bunch of gifts re-purposing odd stuff I found in my basement. Fun, right? This is one of the gifts.


Find: I remember pretty clearly talking my mom into ordering these iron-on name labels like 20 years ago before the first time I went to sleep-away camp. I guess weirdo younger me just had to have them. I don't even remember if we used them or not.

A lot of my brother's friends call him by his last name, so when I re-discovered the labels, I knew I had to make him something.


I pulled a couple of squares of home dec weight fabric (again from my crazy clearance haul - I will be so sad when the pile is gone!) and ironed on the strips onto one of the squares for my pillow front.


But of course, that wasn't enough. I was a little worried the iron-on stickiness wouldn't hold up long-term, so I sewed straight along the edges, even when the strips overlapped.

After that, I cut down the fabric a bit to a rectangle shape and sewed a simple pillow. The whole thing didn't take more than an hour. Honest!


Do you have something you want to repurpose but don't quite know what to do? E-mail me at lansdownelifeblog (at) gmail.com. I'd love to help!
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This is part of my 2011 Handmade Gift Challenge.