My button pillow...and more

Now that I've made one, I'm thinking Letter Perfect Design's $35 price tag is more than worth it!

Mine took several days just to fill in the buttons. (The pillow cover was already made.) First, I drew the G on sorta kinda freehand with a water-soluble pen. Smart, right? Not! Once the pillow was finished, you could see bits of ink here and there, so I sprayed it with distilled water, which left a wide circle on the linen. Probably because the pillow cover hadn't been washed this century--okay, not quite that bad, but almost.

So, I washed it. Of course, I did. It was an old linen dishtowel that had been washed many times, a lot of them by me. And it came out of the gentle cycle fine, wrinkles notwithstanding, but the dryer put a real strain on it. I know; I should have used gentle there too, but I was thinking dishtowel, buttons, how delicate is it? I lost two buttons in the dryer, and it came out really wrinkled. Ironing was a pain in the backside. Very hard to get into the center area, especially using the water I began with--same distilled water I sprayed it with in the beginning. This time though it didn't stain, just didn't get all the wrinkles out. Sizing did, mostly. 

I still think it looks pretty darn cute!

Here's a closer look. 

I made the base pillow several years ago. Here's a fuzzy picture of the before. If you can't distinguish it, it started as a white linen towel with three red stripes along each edge. 

So much for the button pillow. And yes, I will make another, in spite of my opening statement. I just won't do it immediately. 

What's my next project? Read on.

This morning, Tom had to go to the dentist so I piddled at the thrift store while waiting. Found this fabric--7 1/2 yards for $10!

You really can't tell what a good bargain it was. Looks like silk, though I can't tell for certain. But hey, for less than $2 a yard, who's quibbling? And it'll look terrific in my guest bedroom where I want to do a Nester-type mistreatment for the windows.

This is one Kimba of A Soft Place to Land did. 

I really like this one and think I could mistreat it even more than she did. :) Here's her before windows: 

Notice the difference between her window-top to ceiling measurement and mine below. 

Hers look maybe 18" to ceiling, mine are more like 2 feet. And I don't think those kind of valances should be longer than 18". I wanted my mistreatment attached to the ceiling, as is hers. I'm sure the ceiling attachment made hers easier. But what if I didn't do mine that way?

I thought I'd try making mine of foamcore, sort of in the style of the one Kimba did in her post here except instead of attaching it to a 2x6 I'd use a double layer of foam core cut to the same dimension. (I found some at Dollar Tree for a dollar a sheet.) I'd have to attach several together to get something long enough but I figured I could attach the layers in different locations--does that make sense? Yunno, top layer would have two pieces glued together end to end in one place, bottom layer end to end in another. 

Then, after the fabric's attached--I'm still thinking about how to do this; duct tape doesn't work so well--I can use something lightweight to hold it up. (Tom hates putting holes in our walls. He had so many to patch when we sold our last house, and one of the patch jobs wound up with him having to completely repaint a room he wouldn't have had to otherwise. Made him grumpy, to say the least.)

What say you? Am I on the right track? Any ideas on the "lightweight" thing I'd use to hold it up? I'm thinking the foamcore would be so much lighter than wood that I wouldn't have to use the braces Kimba did. Am I totally off-base?

Thanks, y'all. Ta.