St. Patrick’s Day Watercolor Painted Pillow Cover

Top O’ the mornin’ to ya! Are you looking to do a bit of decorating for St. Patrick’s Day? One of the easiest ways to dress up a room with a theme is with a throw pillow. “Lucky” for you, I’ve got a fun idea for a painted watercolor 4-leaf clover pillow cover to share! #seewhatididthere

I didn’t use to do a lot of decorating or anything else for St.Patrick’s Day, but my family loves to celebrate it in some way every year. When I met Shay, I had no idea how much he loved St. Patrick’s Day. Little did I know that we would become the people eating corned beef and cabbage every year and drinking green beer. Well, I probably knew that we’d be drinking green beer, because Shay does like beer, but I had no idea on the corned beef and cabbage. I don’t like corned beef, and I’m indifferent to cabbage. I mean, I like cabbage in cabbage rolls, and of course, in coleslaw, but by itself, especially boiled, cabbage is just kinda.. eww. My man loves it – at least on St. Patrick’s Day. We once had an entire conversation about corned beef and cabbage that ended with Puff the Magic Dragon. True story. The point to my story is, over the years, I’ve had to up my St. Patrick’s Day decor and celebration game. A few years ago I whipped up these fun rainbow frosted brownie bites. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do this year, so you can bet I was super excited when my friend Meg of Green with Decor invited me to share a St. Patrick’s Day project idea, along with a group of fun and talented bloggers! Instant plan! Well, save for what we’ll be eating… but you work with what you have! On to the pillow cover!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Pillow form – Mine was a 10″x10″ form I already had. I wish I’d had a down filled form, but I didn’t have one the size I needed! If I’d had time, I’d have ordered this one.
• Fabric to cover pillow – I had a package of white cotton napkins that were the perfect size for my pillow form, so I used that for the front of my pillow, and some velvet that I had in my fabric stock for the back.
• Watercolor paints – Any type will do – they do not need to be fabric paints. I used this cake set, and I’ve also used this liquid version as well. You could potentially use your kids Crayola paints, but the colors won’t be as vibrant.
• -Fine-tip black sharpie
• -Iron
•  -Fabric Medium –  This bottle of magic, when added to paint, allows you to use any type paint on fabric without leaving the fabric feeling stiff. I found this FolkArt brand at JoAnn’s, and was happy with the results, but could only find the small bottle there. If you’re using this for a larger pillow, it’s cheaper for the larger bottle on Amazon.
• -Two small containers for water
• -Two brushes

To begin, transfer the clover and text pattern onto your pillow using the marker. (Right-click on the link and save to your computer). I used my Cricut to do this, drawing it directly on the fabric with the fine tip pen. Because I wasn’t cutting the fabric, I was able to write onto the fabric without applying Wonder-under first.

If you don’t have a die-cut machine,  you can also apply the design with a fine point sharpie pen using one of these transfer methods, printing on fabric using printable fabric, or if your fabric is sheer enough, tracing the design by hand.

Whichever method you choose to use, you’ll need to heat-set your design before adding watercolor to the fabric. Do this by applying dry heat to the drawing from the highest setting of your iron.

Once your design is sealed, you can add your watercolor accents – the fun part! Fill your two containers with water – one for cleaning your brush and one for the fabric medium. You don’t need alot.. probably about 1/4 cup. Add about a 1/8 of a cup of fabric medium to one of the water cups.

Use one of the brushes dipped in water to wet your paint, keeping in mind, the less water you use, the more color your brush will pick up, the less water, the lighter the color and the more it will spread on your fabric.

Begin applying the color to your fabric, filling in the design, staying in the lines.. just like kindergarten! I used various colors of green to give the drawing dimension – there isn’t a right or wrong way to do this.

Once you have painted your fabric as desired, use the water with the paint medium added to it and paint over the entire surface. You may see a slight amount of run from the outline, but it should be minimal if you’ve heat set the marker.

Your fabric will be quite wet at this point. Allow your fabric to dry – My fabric took a few hours to dry in the air.  Once dry, carefully go over your lines if necessary, then again, heat set the design using a dry, very hot iron.

You’re ready to create your cover! I like a pillow cover with a zipper, but an envelope style pillow cover would also work here. Until I get around to writing a tutorial on how to create one, I like this one for creating a cover with a zipper a lot – it’s very thorough and easy to understand.

I added handmade pompoms in the corners of my pillow cover for just a little bit extra – I pinned the pompom strings from the inside to each corner before stitching.

I love how this cute little pillow turned out, and despite the fact that we’ll likely be eating the dreaded corned-beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, adding this to our decor means at least we’ll be doing it in style! How about you? How will you be celebrating St. Paddy’s Day? Do you do any decorating? Do you have any “authentic” Irish dishes to share?

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