Inspired By Buttons

At Christmas time my family draws names. I have 5 siblings and 3 of us are now married, so buying presents for everyone would be a big expense. Or in my case, everyone would probably get handmade gift certificates for 1 free hug. The thing is I love finding the perfect present for everyone or choosing a theme and collecting a bunch of little stuff. This year I drew my little sis and my husband drew my big sis. So, in essence, I got both of my sisters. They are very different, but they both bought property recently. So, I was scouring etsy for the perfect idea. I narrowed it down to some sort of household item pretty quickly and then I found these pillows...

Etsy: withLovebyApril

I thought they were so cute, but expensive. We have a 50$ budget and with that I would only be able to get them one each. Therefore, I decided to make them myself. It should be easy... I mean how hard could it be to sew a few buttons on a pillow?! I bought a few plain pillow covers from Ikea for like $9 and the actual cushions for about $6 each. I looked other places, but I couldn't find ones with strong enough covers that could hold all of the buttons, so I splurged at Ikea. Anyways, my younger sister got 2 and older got 3. (No, I am not playing favourites, my younger sister got another little present too!)

I bought buttons from ebay. I looked at button lots and bought a few lots of blues and teals. Most were vintage but I bought one lot of new ones that I liked the colours of. I bought about 250 buttons and spent probably $12. And I did use all the buttons.

On a side note... I love the way buttons look. I have no idea why, but they totally inspire me.

For my first pillow I took a pencil and drew on the letter. This wasn't the greatest idea because erasing it turned out to be pretty difficult. For the next ones I just put dots on to show me the corner of the letters. That was much more successful and easy to follow. I then sewed on every button individually, using embroidary thread. It took a bit of practice but got much easier as I went along. My little sister got an A and a Star. My older sister got a L, a heart and a N. I can not sew by hand and it took me a long time. I worked on it for weeks...every evening sewing a few on. I do have really bad eyesight, so threading the needle was a pain.

Here are how mine turned out....

Overall I spent for each pillow
$9 - for cover
$4 - for cushion
$2.5 - for buttons (on average)
$15.5 per pillow!!

It was much cheaper.... but, if I consider what my time is worth... not too sure.

Overall, I think they are pretty cool, and it came from the heart and a few weeks before Christmas my great-grandma passed away (she was 101!!). I asked my mom for a few buttons from some of her clothes. So, I sewed a few on each of the pillows for my sisters. You can see them on the corners of the pillow with the star. Now they have even a bit more meaning for everyone.