Cook, Craft, Go to School: heart

For my grandma's birthday I really wanted to give her a homemade gift. I am not big on making homemade gifts because life's other obligations get in the way (and most gifts from my family tend to be belated). This birthday however was an opportune time to make something special. It was spring break so I had extra time on my hands and I was already challenged to think up something that was inexpensive because my parents had just paid college tuition for my sister. My mind flip-flopped from one idea to another, at one time I was dead-set on making a half-dozen napkins with ranch-related symbols embroidered on them. Then I considered making a table runner. I was trying to push my mom to take me to Mood, but she was very resistent for a good reason, it was 5:00pm the eve of my grandma's birthday. I had to think of something simple and then it came to me.

The Beloved State Wall Hanging. A framed felt cutout of the state of California with a heart where my grandparents live, Sonoma County.

The felt is from Michaels and the background fabric and frame are from Ikea. I originally went went Ikea to find some fabric from the fabric section but nothing was turning my crank. I still did not give up and went searching around for some cute fabric.

And I found it...

I found this cute pillow and fell in love with it especially because I was looking for chevron fabric and found this one to be similar but more interesting. I love the colors too!

This is what the pillow is called

Next I had to search for the perfect frame to suit the fabric and my grandparents house.

The Ribba frame in medium brown was just what I was looking for.

Then I went over to Michaels and selected gray felt for the California cut-out.

Overall you will need...

Fabric of your choice (the amount depends on how large frame is)
2 colors of felt, your choice
A frame
Fabric adhesive (I used Aleene's Peel & Stick Sheets)
Wood glue
Scissors, seam ripper, pencil, printer etc.

First I picked apart the pillow cover with a seam ripper, and saved one of the panels of fabric and the zipper, which I did not need. Then I iron out any wrinkles.

Then I hopped on to my computer to select an image of California's shape. When I found the image that I liked, I pasted it on to a Word document. To make sure that California ended up the size I needed it to be, I make a rectangular outline around the image the same size as the frame's picture dimension allowance (not sure what it is really called) to use as reference.

If you don't need help with this keep reading...

(Note: these directions are for Mac Word 2011)

Select the image of your state and copy an paste it to your Word document
Double click the image and change the "wrap text" setting to "square" or "tight" (look for the image of the dog)
Then click "shapes">"rectangles">image of the square
Drag a rectangle on your document (don't worry about the size yet)
Change the fill to "no fill"
Expand the rectangle to the size your need around the state image
Adjust the state image to whatever looks good to you.
Print