IKEA pillow cover made fabulous { inexpensive DIY pillow }

Thisweek the autumn weather has been inspiring me. We finally have some sunshineafter weeks of rain, tornadoes, and yes, even an earthquake a few weeks ago. Who would havethought Virginia would see all of this in a few short weeks? Well nature hasbeen testing us. And testing my patience as I try to find indooractivities for a 4 year old and a 1 1/2 year old.

Anyway, the new warm sunshine means perfect sweater weather and walking outsidewith the kids. We didn't get to the apple orchard this year.Usually it's an annual trip for us, but somehow we missed the apple orchard and hit the pumpkin patch the weekend before Halloween.

Here is a tutorial for a new project. I bought the supplies and IKEA and wanted to try to replicate some of the super-expensive throw pillows I'm seeing online and in stores.

For this project, I used the RITVA 20" square cushion cover from IKEA { $7 }, an INNER cushion from IKEA { $3 } and four fabric transfers from Avery { approx. $1ea. }.

I had an old fruit growing textbook from the early 1900's. I scanned in a few of my favorite color plates, then touched them up in Adobe PhotoShop Elements. Next I rearranged my design digitally so they were overlapping. Since my pillow is 20" square, I needed to enlarge each apple to almost 8" square, reverse each image { according to the transfer instructions }, and printed them out on the transfer paper { below }.

Next, I cut out each apple, leaving a 1/8" margin around each image { don't leave any margin if you don't want a tiny white line around each apple } . You can also see the smaller test copy I printed out for reference { below }. Remember that your images are going face down, so when you arrange the apples to match your test copy, you will need to reverse the apples { unless you don't care of course! }.

Once I had an arrangement I liked, I used masking tape to keep the image from moving. I did a final check on my pillow to make sure the image's margins were okay. { below }

According to the transfer directions, I heated my iron and started to press down around the edges of each apple to lightly set them. I DID NOT go over the masking tape - it likely would have melted. I removed the tape when my iron got to that spot. Press firmly { I count to 5 } and then move the iron. Test a corner by peeling back the corner of the paper. You'll see that my yellow apple has transferred nicely { below }.

I focused peeling off one apple at a time { see below }. After removing the paper, you'll see part of the apple is on the pillow and the other pieces adhered to the back of the other transfers. Avoid ironing back over the ink that transferred already - I'm assuming it would stick to your iron and I sure didn't want to test it! If I needed another press of the iron, I laid the transfer paper I just removed back on top and did another quick press.