Mexican Papel Picado Hand-painted and Quilted Pillow Cover 20 x 20

Description

Papel picado is usually seen in restaurants and at festive occasions as banners.  The banner is composed of several rectangles of a design made by cutting out a design in either paper or light plastic.  Many years ago I purchased a paper tissue papel picado in one of my favorite boutiques in Mexico.  From this I made a stencil from acetate.  Cutting out all the tiny pieces with an exacto-knife was not easy.

Once I had the stencil completed, I used it to paint the design on fabric.  I used various colors of permanent fabric paint.  After using a stencil brush to apply most of the paint, I had to go back over the design with a fine paint brush to further define the edges.  Later, I added other fabrics in  patchwork style to increase the size of the pillow.  I used free-motion quilting to attach the fabric to batting and a backing fabric.  Each pillow has an envelope closing. The pillow insert is not included, but you can purchase pillow forms from many locations.

The main colors used in this pillow cover are green and blue. The fabrics surrounding the painted section are all Kaffe Fassett 100% cotton fabrics. The design is painted on a green batik fabric and the fabric paint color is a metallic blue.