Oh Dear Me Pillow Cover

Oh hello lovlies!! How is everyone this fine fall day?? 

It's been a bit since I posted and boy do I have a doozie for you today!!

I did another tutorial over on the Sizzix blog today and I am so in love with this pillow cover.  I may have to make a ton more!!!! 

It's crazy easy and the best part, besides it being adorable, it has no waste except for the trimmings to square up your fabric!!! 

It uses the actual die cut piece and the negative space so you don't have to throw anything away!!! 

If you want to make one of your own using the same Reindeer Die or even a different one, head on over to my post on the Sizzix blog and you will see just how easy it is!!!

Much Love!!!

Hip to be Square Pillow Cover Tutorial

Hello lovelies!! 

I had gotten my hands on Emily Herrick's new line called Rustique for Michael Miller and decided to make a pillow cover with it.  If you were observant, it made it's way into my NEW blog header!

I always seem to use a fabric line plus white or a light neutral.  When I decided to make this pillow I didn't want to add any fabrics to it because the colors are so pretty and the design didn't need the white.  

In other words, I'm using small projects to force myself out of the "white" habit...lol! 

Here is the pillow I made!  It's made using the Sizzix Big Shot machine and one Half Square Triangle die to cut all the pieces.  

The full tutorial can be found over on the Sizzix Blog! I hope you will check it out! 

Oh, I also added a link a the top of my blog under the header for links to all my Sizzix Tutorials too! That way they will be easy for you to find.  Of course, the other Quilt Tutorial link is there too. :) 

Much Love!!!

Did Someone Say Pillow?

Seriously, all of you sure know how to make a girl feel good!! So many of you commented on my post yesterday about my first publication and I just wanted to thank you all!!!! Your support and kind words mean more to me than I could ever put into words! Thank you!

Do you remember this pillow that I showed a while back?

Well...how do you like this one?

Fabric is Innocent Crush by AMH and Kona Solids by Robert Kaufman

You like??!! WooHoo!!! 

Guess what? Ohhhhhh....you're good!!

Yep! I have a tutorial for you! I'm guest blogging over at Stash Manicure again so if you're interested, click HERE for my tutorial! There is also a PDF at the end of it so you can save it for later if you want. Not that you don't want to wait...I mean...It will only take you a couple hours. *wink wink*

Notice any resemblance to the quilt from Stitch? Heehee....I made these with the intention of them matching my daughters quilt! She loves these too.  Even takes them with her when she stays at a friends house! Biggest compliment EVER! :D

Much Love!!!

Featured on SMS!

I kind of feel like I've been chatting all your ears eyes off lately but I've had so much to share! I hope you don't mind. :)

You've seen this pillow recently....

Today....it was featured on the Sew Mama Sew blog!!! Yah! I nearly fell over when I received the email asking if it was ok to feature it! As if I'd say no. :D 

Along with that though....there just *might* be a tutorial coming for it on February 21st. Just sayin'..... ;) 

Much Love!!!

Pillows, Pillows, Pillows!!

I love pillows! 

You may have noticed a few that I have made...

 

 

 

Mini pillows even....

So when I saw that Sew Mama Sew was having a GREAT pillow challenge this month...I just couldn't help myself.  

I was looking through some of my designs in EQ and came across one, that when my daughter saw it, she said, "You HAVE to make that for me!!".  Today was the perfect day to make this pillow since we had a snow day and the office actually closed!! 

I call this pillow Adamant Argyle because after I gave it to my daughter (which she really really loved) I asked her to help me with a name. She said, "Ummmmmmm."...LOL. So, I decided on Adamant Argyle because she was so adamant on me making it for her! 

What do you think? 

I used Kona Crush in black and Kona Cottons in Hibiscus, Thistle, Ash, and Medium Gray.

 

It's so much simpler than it looks...it's almost all 4 patches with sashing! Easy Peasy! 

Not that I have an addiction to pillows or anything, but I may or may not have another one to show you on Friday. ;)

Much Love!!!

Pillow Talk Swap 4 Tutorial

Hello!! 

I hope everyone has had a great weekend! It's been super snowy and blowy here this weekend. Yuk! Double Yuk! I need to live somewhere warm like Florida or California. 

One good thing about it being nasty outdoors is that I get a lot of sewing done, including my Pillow Talk Swap 4 pillow. Woo Hoo!

As promised, a tutorial to go along with it. :) 

Here is the pillow all complete and ready to ship out...

Start out by choosing some of your favourite fabrics. Here was my layout...

I am using 11 fabrics here. You can choose more or less. It's totally a personal preference.

I am using Darlene Zimmerman's Dresden Plate ruler. This is important. You could probably use any dresden ruler. The process will be the same. 

For this tutorial I am using the 6.5" mark on the ruler.

From each of your fabrics, cut a strip that is 6.5" wide.  I double up my fabric to make this process go faster!

Lay out your strip of fabric and lay your ruler so that the edge is along the 6.5" mark on the ruler.

Cut along each edge of the ruler.

Now flip your ruler 90 degrees and lay it down right along the edge you just cut.

Then cut along the edge of the ruler.

You now have two "plates". Or 4 plates if you doubled your fabric.

I cut 4 plates from each of my fabrics but you will only need 39 "plates" to make this pillow.

You will need to sew three rows of 13 plates.

Begin by laying out your plates in a pleasing order, alternating each plate.

I show 10 plates wide here, you need 13.

Start with the first row.

Take plate #1 and plate #2. Flip plate #2 right sides together with plate #1 making sure that a bit of fabric overhangs. (see photo)

Sew a 1/4" seam.

Press.

Add plate #3 in the same manner...

The overhang will be at the bottom this time.

Keep sewing the pieces together for each of the three rows. Press each row.

Sew rows together matching seams.

Next we have to trim off the edges. I trimmed mine to 18" square.

The cutting mat I have is 18" wide so it was perfect for this step. If you have a larger mat, just use the 18" marks.

Lay out your pillow and center it in the 18" space on your cutting mat so that when you trim, both sides will be equal. Once you have it set, trim sides.

Turn your pillow 90 degrees and do the same step to trim the other side.

You should have a nicely squared pillow top now.

You can stop here if you want, but I wanted a larger pillow so I added borders. I added strips that measured 1 3/4" (before sewing).

My pillow now measures 20" square.

At this point, you need to quilt it. I recommend this as it gives your pillow some stability and added depth. For the backing I usually use muslin. It's fairly cheap and you won't see the back anyway. For the batting, I use the same stuff I put in my quilts, Warm and White.

Layer it: muslin, batting, and pillow right side up.

Quilt as desired. I quilted mine in a cross hatch design with stitches about 3/4" apart.

Now comes the back. I like envelope style backs so that is what I will show you here. However, you can also find out how to do others like using a zipper.

Cut two pieces. One measuring 20" x 16". One measuring 20" by 13". (If your pillow is smaller or larger, use your measurements)

On the 20" side of each piece, fold over the edge 1/2" and press. Fold that same edge over again, and press. Then stitch about 1/8" from edge. (see photos)

Get your quilted pillow top and lay it right sides up. Notice I haven't trimmed off the sides yet. I do this step last.

Lay down your larger back piece first, right sides together. Make sure the edge that you folded over is facing the center of your pillow top.

Lay down your second piece, again the folded edge towards the center. Pin all around the pillow to hold this in place.

Sew around the edges. I use a 1/4" seam but in the corners and along the spots where the folded edges of the back lay, I back stitch. Then I sew forward and back stitch again to reinforce the spots that will have the most stress.

After you have it all stitched down, trim off the excess batting and backing and turn your pillow right sides out! Stuff it with a 20" pillow form and ...

Voila!

You may be wondering why a 20" pillow form when my pillow actually measures 19.5"? I like to make my pillows 1/2" smaller than the form for a nice snug fit. I don't like floppy pillows. :)

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and, as always, if you make one, please put it in the Flickr Pool so I can ooohhh and ahhhhh over it. :)

Much Love!!!

Process Pledge

Something I  learned from doing these give aways was a lot of you asked for more photos and more information on my process. I guess I never really thought that other people wanted to know that kind of stuff. But hey, I'm happy to share that too. :) 

So...I've seen a lot of other bloggers take the Process Pledge and I've also jumped in too. I will definitely try harder to share my thought process in designing and quilting in general. 

I'll even start right now! LOL! How is that for fast? ;)

I love wonky stars. I don't care for wonky in itself, but wonky stars, I love those. Try and figure that out.  Anyways, I signed up for the pillow talk swap again and this was a little bit for practice and a little bit for a gift. (***psst...actually it was totally for the gift, but shhhh... :)***) So let's begin with that. 

I would say 99% of my designs begin on my favourite graph paper.  This particular one is 4 squares per inch. I like to use each square in 2" increments. I also have other paper that is 10 squares per inch. Sometimes that is easier for bigger projects, but those squares are tiny!

I am almost embarrassed to show you the inside of this notebook.  Mostly because there are pages that look like this.... 

Scribbled on. Math written out. A lot of gobeldeegook...lol. I have to do this though, to keep in all in one place. If I do it on scratch paper it will get thrown away and I will end up having to do it all over again. 

However, ALSO in this book are my designs. Such as my very first one for Moda Bake Shop, Random Reflections. This is how that began....

I made an angel pillow for the last round of of the pillow talk swap and the only amount of design that I did for that was this....

Notice the page on the right with more chicken scratching? Heh!

This is how it turned out afterwards...

There's not a lot of high tech stuff going on there is there? Nope. This just goes to show you that you can do it too! Just grab some graph paper and a pencil and a good eraser and start drawing. Heck, I don't even use a ruler to draw straight lines. I just get the idea on the paper with the measurements and go with it. It doesn't matter if you "can't draw". What matters is that YOU can interpret your own work to put it into your project.  Go ahead...try it. :)

I mentioned the wonky star pillow.....let me show you how it came to be. 

First. I needed a gift. A good one. One that I loved just as much as I think the recipient would. Personally, I feel that if I don't love a project that I did, how can I expect the person it is going to, to love it?

I started drawing, knowing that I wanted it to be a wonky star pillow. 

See? I don't even worry so much about straight lines. :)

Next, comes choosing the fabrics. This varies from project to project. Sometimes I will stay with in the boundaries of one single line, sometimes I will venture and grab some from different lines. Just depends on the mood I am in. :)  For this project, I decided on Riley Blake! Mmmm!

It's a bit blurry. Sorry about that.

After I had my sketch, I figured out what I needed to cut for the entire pillow. I don't want to have to stop sewing when I get in a good groove to cut more pieces. I usually do this for each project. Cut everything, then sew.

Then of course, piecing the blocks and sewing them together according to my sketches. 

Isn't it pretty??!! Oh how I love this! :)

Then I layer the backing, the batting, and the "quilt" top together. Then I stare at it aimlessly until a quilting design jumps out at me. No really! Sometimes I will even get my daughter and ask her how I should quilt something. She's 12. :) 

For this one, I thought, hm...it's wonky. Let's quilt it wonky too. So I took my blue painters tape and created a straight line from the left edge to the right edge at an angle. Stitched my line next to the tape, removed it and did the same thing going from top to bottom. This created 4 quadrants. When I straight line quilt, this is how I work. Quadrants seem to make it much easier to handle.

This is one quadrant completed.

Part of the process is also showing what NOT to do. Uh. Anyone who has read my blog for some time now, knows that I'm not afraid to show my mistakes. Well guess what? I did it again. I sewed the batting to the backing because it flipped over on me while quilting. Doh! 

However, I didn't fret. This was a pillow after all so the back of it really wasn't ever going to be showcased because I still had to add the casement part so I made a funny out of it and left it like this. :)

I think the new owner of this pillow will get a kick out of me leaving that there. Mistakes remind us that we are all human. No one is perfect, even those really famous quilty people that if we ever met we'd probably stand there and go "ga ga ga"..haha! They make mistakes too so don't worry about them. Use it to your advantage and learn from them. Me, well this was my THIRD time making this same mistake....perhaps the third time is a charm. :)

After all of that....this is how it turned out. Had it not been going to a very special person, I may have kept it for myself because I adore it that much. However, I will share that I plan to make this design into a quilt. :)

 

Dear recipient...I hope you love it!! :D

I hope you enjoyed my process and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment, leaving your email address in the box provided, and I will happily get back to you. :)

Much Love!!!