When I was pregnant – well, even before I was pregnant – I thought about how much fun it would be to learn what my child loved and then fill their world with that thing, you know? Just support whatever it was they couldn't get enough of. At age 2, Miles has a couple of those: basketball, horses, ballet, and rainbows. And it's just as much fun as I thought it would be to watch him walk wide-eyed into the Basketball Hall of Fame, to ride perched atop a somnolent pony at the fair, to point out a rainbow arching over our house.
I wanted to get him a stuffed rainbow toy for Christmas last year, and found this one [affiliate link] on Amazon, but it seemed a little pricey. My friend Katy had been doing watercolor painting on fabric, so I decided to make my own for Miles.
(I don't have any photos of the process, which I feel bad about. My phone's camera started taking pictures on a delay, so they're all blurry. Kristie surprised me with a new one for Christmas though!)
- I mixed fabric medium [affiliate link] with water and painted a rainbow using basic watercolors and a foam brush onto cotton muslin. I let it dry and then put it in the dryer according to the fabric medium's instructions to set the paint.
- Once it was totally dry, I cut out the rainbow and a matching piece of gray felt for the back. I pinned the pillow sides together (painted side facing in) along with a piece of fun vintage trim I happened to have.
- I machine-sewed along both arches and one short side, then turned the piece inside out and stuffed it. I stitched the other side closed by hand.
It reminded me of this project, and another one I did for Christmas which was so much fun.