Framed Silhouette

I have had two frames sitting around since Mike and I got married that I haven't used. Seriously, 4 years and 5 moves later, they are still in their original plastic wrapping.

Jill from Homemade by Jill did put her boy Oscar's silhouette on a pillow with fabric paint and freezer stencil. I thought it was so cute. I decided that I needed to have my kids' silhouettes up now that I have two kids and two frames to put them in :) Plus, this is a perfect project for using up a fat quarter that has been lying around staring at you for months on end. But I wouldn't know about that part.

The only hard part was getting silhouette pictures of my girls. The oldest wanted to "help" way too much (and had to take potty breaks every two seconds... hence the missing clothes), and then when my camera would make any noise, my baby girl would look at the camera instead of away. There was a lot of this:

and this:
and even some of this before I finally got a decent profile photo.

I had the girls sit in FRONT of the window, so their faces would be darkened in a natural silhouette. It turned out way better with my oldest. I just put my paper up to the computer screen and used it as a light box to trace their profiles. That way I saved printer ink!

I was able to put both silhouettes on one fat quarter cut in half for each girl. So what does that make it? A skinny eighth? Anyway, I simply followed Jill's instructions up to the point where she starts making a pillow and then did the following:

I took the backing off of the picture frame and just used that to wrap my fabric around. I got out my trusty fabric glue stick that I stole from my mom (sorry mom!), layed the silhouette right side down, and centered the frame backing over the silhouette the best I could.

Then I started glueing the fabric down, long sides first. I should have trimmed the fabric before I started glueing, but I was too excited and forgot.

But never fear! I did trim as soon as I remembered! Then I glued down the short sides just in the middle section. The corners had to be loved a little bit before they would look perfect so I didn't want them glued yet.

The trick is to take the corner of the fabric and fold it down so it makes a 45 degree angle, like so. It will look like a sideways triangle at this point. Glue it down!

Then take the top and fold the entire thing over and it will cover that 45 degree angle. The fabric will angle in slightly, but that is what you are going for. If it were even with the edge, it could show from the other side- that isn't what you want.

When you have all the corners done, it will look like so:

Looks messy from the back, huh! Well, no worries, the front looks fantastic:

This is where I put the silhouette in the frame. Since my pictures are on stands and not hanging on the wall, I put the paper that originally came with the frame over the back to cover the messy look. Perfect.

And, in the end, it is a perfect framed baby silhouette, ready to be put next to her sister's silhouette in their bedroom!