Pillow Shams with Fabric Paint Tutorial

I made these lilac pillow shams to go with our bedspread (which is in storage)...and embellished them with inverse stenciling.
The bird motifs match the bird theme wall art I shared here.

To fill them up, I had to use two standard pillows!
I think my pillows may just be a little flat, but maybe I made the shams too generous in size.
Oh well, that way they won't look lost on our king-sized bed.

The shams tie on the inside:

If you want to make some large pillow shams, you'll need (for each sham):

three 3"x17" strips for the ties

one 36" x 44" piece for the sham itself.

I prepared the ties first. To do this, I sewed each 3" strip into a 17" long tube. Then I cut it in half, sewed up one end, and turned them. Then I pressed each one flat.

For the sham, I folded the large piece in half so it was 36" x 22" and sewed around like a pillow case. I used fabric that was 36" wide, so it had a finished edge on two sides. On the bottom side, I zig-zagged to avoid any fraying.

For the top edge, I folded down the hem three times. I wanted the finished length to be about 30" but didn't want a very deep lip on the sham itself.

Before sewing the top hem, I pinned the ties into place. I used three sets per pillow.

I sewed around the edge and attached the ties in one step.

Now comes the fun part. Painting!
On the right side of the fabric, I placed the silhouettes I wanted to paint around. I used painter's tape to mark off a small area around the silhouettes. I taped the shapes down from the bottom using the painter's tape, too.

Place some paper or cardboard between the layers of the pillowcase to prevent the paint from bleeding through to the back!

To do the painting, I used a foam brush and fabric paint (same stuff I used in this tutorial).
You can't use brush strokes for this, you have to dab the paint around the shapes to avoid getting paint underneath the shapes.

It probably would've been better to wait for the paint to dry before removing the tape and shapes! But I couldn't wait...

I'm pretty happy with how the shams turned out.

If only our house was done and we had our bed and bedspread out of storage--I want to see how they look!