Comic book/Superhero bedroom decor

I had good intentions, gentle readers.  I did.
When we first bought this house - almost a year and a half ago now- Walters bedroom was the first one painted. My intention was to paint his bedroom, assemble all his new furniture and decorate his bedroom to make it a space he would really love.
The room got painted, and all the furniture assembled.  Then that's where we stopped. His bedroom got to that unfortunate place of "good enough for now".
Walter wants a comic book/ superhero bedroom. He has taken to drawing and painting pictures of super heroes and sticking them to his walls with tape.   Something needs to be done for this boy.   But a real bedroom makeover will cost a few hundred dollars.   Dollars that are otherwise accounted for in our family budget.
I could start small though.  Little things whose cost we could squeeze out of our weekly entertainment budget.  So that is what I have done.   I made him toss pillows for his bed that were inspired by comic books. I had almost everything I needed on hand, so a set of three will only cost about $9. (I only managed to get one done last night, but a set of three will be on his bed)


First, I found some free clip art printables with the iconic super hero sound effects. I printed them out in full page size.  These are what I used as a "pattern" for my letters.  If you have even an iota of artistic ability you can likely skip this step.  I, however, need a pattern very much.

Super hero sound effects

 I cut out my letters and pinned them to a piece of felt.   To be sure I wouldn't run out of felt, or have to switch dye lots in the middle of one of my words I bought felt off the bolt from the fabric store instead of using small felt sheets.  I bought more than enough red, blue and yellow felt to do all three pillows. The felt was on sale for 40% off (*grin*) and I bought a half meter of each colour. My total came to $9.66 after taxes.
I cut the letters from my felt with the paper pattern as a guide.

Paper pattern pinned to felt, ready for cutting

 Next I cut out the red felt.

POW background

 I pinned the letters to the backing...

pinned

Then I ran it through the sewing machine using yellow thread.

POW secured to red backing. 

 I have tons of smallish pieces of black felt on hand.  So I decided that would make as good a pillow as anything.  I measured out the size of black felt I wanted.  Roughly 10''x 12''.

The black background make the colours pop

 Using red thread I sewed the background to the black felt.  I did have to switch thread colours back to yellow to affix the parts of the "P" "W" and "!" where there is no red visible against the black.  I didn't want red threads running over the yellow felt.
With right sides together I sewed the pillow front to the pillow back leaving a space for tuning and stuffing.
Then I turned the pillow right side again.

Looking good 

 Using on hand pollyfill stuffing I filled the pillow. Then I stitched closed the opening.

Filling the pillow

 Looking back at the original clip art image, I wanted to add the black and white highlights seen there.  Using some fabric paint I copied what I saw.  I think the fabric paint really helps make it look like it came out of a comic book... you know...  comic book-y. ;)

Taa-daa!

Walter loves it and when the other two are finished they will be adorable on his bed.