A Pretty Cool Knock off with a Side Dose of CRAFT FAIL

Inspiration fabric, $46 a yard

The fabric was great, in fact I almost bought some since I was really drawn to it's graphic nature despite the price. In the end it was not the price that kept me back but the actual words. These words while totally eye catching in themselves meant nothing to me, in fact they meant less than nothing since I am not a traveler or a nut for all things European, it's just not my passion so in the end it seemed silly to have the fabric in my home no matter how striking.

And yet the idea of words on fabric kept spinning in my head, with my thoughts drifting to  words that mean something to me in the thought that it would make the item ( in this case some pillows) more meaningful to me.  Of course they are not putting a lot of design time into Domestic Anarchy fabric that I know of so I knew I was going to have to make some if my vision was going to be a go.

Things started out easy enough, I used Photo Shop to create a document that was loaded with words of where I live and Summer. There is little like a Chattanooga Summer, thick, hot, lush, and languid, pretty much exactly what a Southern Summer should be and I wanted to celebrate that with this project.  So I used words around me and then set the document to print out mirrored.

I printed it out on TAP and was ready to roll! I selected some really nice  pre-hemmed linen toweling from my stash to make these pillows quick and easy.  I had packed the words tight on the document with the thought that I would then cut them apart and space them over the pillow thus saving on TAP which is about $3 a sheet. (At this point  you can feel free to add in the tragic sounding music building to a dramatic climax since in retrospect this is when things started to go wrong).

I took the cut words and placed the randomly over the fabric thinking that I was being so cool and free spirited (listen.. the music is getting louder) and then I started to iron and things were going ok but the little pieces of paper were rather fiddly since I was trying to iron them one at a time.

Really, things were going pretty well, moving from bottom to ( cue the earth shaking music!) ....uhhh top... yes folks that is the word Chattanooga UPSIDE DOWN... ARG!  Ok I think.. there is nothing I can do about it.. I guess it will just be a quirky bit ( I am the MASTER of the mind game, even with myself!)  People will think it's whimsical and charming.. yeh.. that's the ticket!  Of course this was great until it happened again. LESSON - do not let a dyslexic  check your typography orientation!

What I ended up with was this.....

On the upside the pups really liked the pillow, so much in fact getting a photo of it was quite difficult. Even from this shot you can see my other fail in the word HOT. Molly does not seem to mind  so maybe this pillow will go in her cage since I don't think it's going to see the prime time.



Overall I am quite happy with the technique and will give this another go since I really like the over all look but lessons have been learned!

Next time I will spring for multiple sheets of TAP and pre-space my words so I do not have to deal with little slips of paper. This will automatically solve issue number two, my inability to read backwards in the correct orientation.  Craft fail- maybe, learning experience- Always!  I wonder if there is a craft-fail linky going on..that isjust what I need!

HA.. linking this up at Seven Thirty Three  hope they enjoy a  worthy try as well as a fail :)