Maybe it was the rainy grey skies this weekend that reverse-inspired these soft, springtime pillows.

This is another choose-your-own-adventure project. The whole hog includes hand-printing fabric, iron-on appliqués, and sewing. But you can do as much or little as you want: You could do all of the above. Or you could buy a printed fabric to skip the hand-printing part. Or you could buy a ready-made pillowcase and embellish it with appliqués.

This was my first time printing fabric with a hand-carved rubber stamp. I followed the clear instructions in Lena Corwin’s fantastic book, and think there might be more printing in my future. I have to fess up that I ignored her good advice about printing on tightly-woven fabric with little texture. I didn’t mean to be contrary, but I had this linen fabric in my fabric stash and liked the color. Its looseness made for kind of wonky, uneven printing, but the result has its own charm. Then I created this gilded springtime scene with iron-on appliqués and backed the pillows in wool felt – one is a soft sky blue, the other a juicy, grassy green.

I didn’t set out with the intention of making fraternal twin pillows – but once I realized that, I like the concept.

One final, proud note: these Anthropologie pillows were my original inspiration, priced at $78 each. My costs for two came in at $16, total. Granted, I had fabric left over from other projects and pillow forms in the closet, but even if you had to buy everything, I think you could keep the costs around $30 and create your own multimedia pillow collage.