Happy Pride Day

This weekend I dawned some rainbow nails and journeyed off to West Hollywood. I hope when Pride Weekend (or Day) comes to your neck of the woods you do the same. If "pride" isn't celebrated where you live, then do something about it, isn't important that we celebrate our gigantic strides (and bring attention to the ones we still need to make) towards bringing equality to the millions of individuals who identify as LGBT. 

Fortunately I do not have six fingers, unfortunately yellow got excluded from the spectrum. Indeed yellow is my favorite color but my nail polish was too gummy and would not cooperate. So off with yellow and in with orange (though I must say it is a very cute orange).

I feel so grateful to live in a community where discrimination towards the LGBT population is fairly rare. In fact, I and many of my peers have been raised to see homophobia as taboo. From what I see in my high school community, it's the discriminatory that are forced to hide in that hypothetical "closet." I must point out that my statements are by no means intended to minimize the struggles faced by the LGBT community, this just happens to be the environment I am surrounded by; I live in a very liberal area and attend and very liberal high school (I think the fact that for my school's most recent play my schoolmates put on drag and performed Rocky Horror). I am also grateful that LGBT adults are provided with opportunities to have children too. I really do have some amazing friends that have been raised by either two moms or two dads. Mostly I am grateful that my LGBT friends are free to be open about who they really are and whom they really love. 

Two of my friends at L.A. Pride 2012

Beloved State Wall Hanging

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)

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

Okay now back to the tutorial...

Next cut out your image and pin it to your felt.

 Cut out you felt.

I used my regular fabric scissors to cut out the basic shape.

And then I used some tiny scissors to cut each little nook and notch.

Using a Peel & Stick Sheet I glued the felt California to the fabric.

Then I added a little felt heart where they live.

 Using wood glue I fix the fabric to the fiberboard from the frame, cut away the excess fabric and placed my completion into the frame. Done...whew!

And the best part is the total!

Ribba frame $4.99

Lappljung Fågel pillow $9.99

Gray felt $0.33

Already owned everything else

Total: $15.31 Hooray!!!