Hockey Pillowcase

My little great nephew is a hockey fiend. I made this for him last year. I absolutely adore the referee fabric. It's from Robert Kaufman and the line is called Sports Life. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the helmet fabric. The font is Tinker Toy.

Pillowcases for Connor

 Here are a couple of pillowcases I made for my nephew Connor. The superhero fabric was found at Fabric World down in Stone Mountain, GA. I had the good fortune of hearing about a truckload sale there and as luck would have it, I would be vacationing in the area. Yeah for me! Anyway, all the cotton fabric was $2/yard. Yep, can't beat that now can you! The polka dot fabric I bought at Hancock's last year during their summer clearance sale. Since I really didn't know any super hero sayings, I decided to not embroider anything on the band.

The fabric for the Star Wars pillowcase was purchased at Joann's. I WISH it cost me $2/yard. Unfortunately, it was a lot more. I really don't understand why Joann's feels their fabric is worth more than the quilt shops. Enough of that rant!

Both the light saber design and the font were purchased off of Etsy. Can you see the metallic threads that were used? I had a minor problem with shredding but I was able to get the project finished without too much frustration.

A Buzz Lightyear Birthday

A few months ago I did a birthday shirt for a little gal turning one. She is the daughter of one of my daugther's friends. Unfortunately, I did that shirt the day I was leaving for New York. I forgot to take a picture of it. Well, Lindsay (mom) asked if I could now do a shirt for her son who was turning three. Lindsay did most of the work. She ordered the fabric and t-shirt and had it delivered to my house.

Sean is a big Buzz Lightyear fan. Lindsay found the fabric at Joanns.com. Too bad she had to buy two yards of the fabric. I didn't want pretty much two yards of fabric to go to waste. The applique uses maybe seven inches of fabric. So I decided to make him a pillowcase.

 The applique three is the Yonder font from Planet Applique. For Sean's name I used a new font called Tangerine by Trendy Stitches. Finally, the font used on the pillowcase is Pharmacy from Jolson's.

 This pillowcase took forever to do. The name had over 25000 stitches in it. I knew that it would be a large job but I really wanted his name to be as large as possible. I really hope little Sean likes the pillowcase. Buzz is pretty small on the applique but hopefully he has fun falling asleep on this.

Upcycled Pillowcases

 
About a month ago, I had a weird feeling in the middle of the night that my foot was caught in my sheet. Well, it wasn't a dream. We wore our sheets plum out. When I got up in the morning and looked, there was a 12 inch rip in the fitted sheet. We've had these sheets for maybe 15 years. They were the first flannel sheets that I purchased and here in Wisconsin, I keep flannel sheets on the beds for at least six months.

No doubt about it, the bottom sheet had bit the dust. It was pretty thin all over. I'm surprised I never noticed this while doing laundry. However, the flat sheet still had a lot of life left in it. I hated to throw that away. After looking at it, I decided to make the sheet into pillowcases. We have four pillows on all the beds in the house. So I'm always looking for an extra set of pillowcases. So often when you buy a sheet set, regular sized pillowcases come in the set, even though you're buying queen sized sheets. I was able to make these queen size and I have enough left to make another set.

 

Here's the flat sheet that still has a lot of life left in it.

For the first pair of pillowcases, I'm going to take advantage of that band that's at the top of the sheet. This will save me some time. A nice clean finish all ready for me.

I need to carefully lay the sheet on the cutting mat. There is a lot of width here so I tried to smooth out the wrinkles as best I could. I am cutting slightly larger than I need to so if there are a few wrinkles and the cut is wonky, that's ok. We're going to even this out right away. I'm going to measure down 33 inches and cut. So my piece will measure something like 50 inches by 33 inches.

I take my cut portion and I now fold it the opposite way. This will be along the longer length. I hope your following me! I'm cutting this in half.

You can see the two layers here.

Here is one half, the measurement is 27x33. You can see the band on the left side of the picture and the other end is nice and neat. I retrimmed this.

I was going to do a French seam and kind of forgot. I pinned right sides together. With French seams, you start with wrong sides together. Oh well, this method will work it just won't be a pretty on the inside.

 We are going to take this to the machine and stitch a 1/2 inch seam.

 Now I'm going to trim. Because I was thinking I was doing a French seam, I trimmed a little too close. Otherwise, you should just trim to about 1/4 inch. My seam allowance is more like 1/8 inch.

After I trim the seam allowance, I zig zag down the seam. This will keep the fabric from unraveling. Now all that's left is to turn your pillowcases right side out. Now I need to go back and make two more out of the rest of the sheet.

Winter Flannel Pillowcase

 I wanted to make sure each child had something homemade. This was one of Lauren's presents. Unfortunately, I only had enough fabric for one pillowcase. I collect certain fabrics. I think most have you have seen my collection of cowboy fabrics. I also have a small collection of figure skating fabrics. Two of the girls were figure skaters so that sport is close to my heart. I must have gotten the last on the bolt because what I had was an odd amount. I of course was saving it for a quilt but who know when that would have been completed and the amount of fabric wasn't enough for a quilt I don't think. I do have enough for a few squares still, so that's good. The fabric is called "Snow Valley" and it's from Alexander Henry. It's a beautiful, luxurious flannel. I tried to find more on Ebay but it was a no-go.

Pillowcase of the Month Club Finale

Finally, finally. The last pillowcase for the Pillowcase of the Month Club for Kayla. This was actually the June pillowcase. I mentioned in previous post that I was dragging my feet on this one because the stitch count was so high. The count was over 40,000 stitches and 40 thread changes so that equates to at least two hours watching the machine stitch this out.

I wish the main fabric was a little more vibrant. I couldn't find any good slumber party fabric and I saw this at Hancock's and thought I better grab this. I had the slumber party theme in my mind and didn't want to change that thought.

The designs were from Julia's Needle Designs. I saw the set quite a while ago and bought it and new it had to be for a pillowcase.

Basketball Items for Luke

For some reason, I love designs that have flames shooting out of them. I found this basketball design at Bows and Clothes. The design called for the use of two fabrics for the flames. I had flame fabric on hand and decided to try that instead of a plain red and a plain orange or yellow. The font is Clarence that came with my 4D Extra software.

 

I saw this basketball fabric at Jacqi's shop. Gosh, I wish they would quit coming out with such beautiful novelty fabrics. I could work on other items besides pillowcases. At least they're a quick project. For those of you who follow my blog, the banding fabric is the same that I used on Whitney and Joshua's beer pillowcases last year. I love that fabric. I thought the same fabrics would work with the basketball fabric. 

 The font is also the same as I used for the beer pillowcases. It's "Pharmacy" by Jolson's.

If The Shoe Fits

I'm losing count. I had both of the pillowcases planned for some time. I actually purchased the shoe fabrics in Minnesota a couple of years ago. The birthday fabric I bought at Nancy's Notions a couple of months ago. I finally put them together and I'm real happy with them both.

Too bad I didn't take the time to repress this pillowcase. I finished it at a crafting fundraiser and pulled it out of my bag. The shoe applique is from Five Star Fonts and the actual font is Fairytale from 8CAAP. The fabric is Sandy Gervais for Moda and the line is called Objects of Desire. Perfect for the little shoe diva.

I love how this pillowcase turned out. The font is Gracie from Embrotique. The little balloon applique is from MCA Designs. The fabric is so bright, colorful and fun. The fabric designer is Kari Pearson for Quilting Treasures. Happy Birthday Kayla!

Now One for Matthew

My family went down to Kansas City this past summer for my sister's big birthday shindig. The day we left, we stopped by my sister Karen's house to pick up daughter number three and say goodbye to daughter number one. They decided to stay at Karen's house because of 1. the beer, 2. the in ground swimming pool, 3. the beer.

My nephew Matthew has been growing vegetables this summer. Matty may be seven or eight. What can I say, too many kids in the family. He planted his huge garden and has been tending it. When we stopped by, he got a bag and sent us back to Wisconsin with potatoes, onions and cucumbers. We ate the potatoes up right away. Great job Matty! 

I knew that I wanted to make him something farming related. When I stopped by Hancock's, I saw that they had all of the John Deere fabric on sale. Yippee. We're in business. It took a little bit of time to find a simple font that would be similar to the font that the tractor company uses. The font is called Chachie and is available from 8 Claws and a Paw.

Didn't I Say I Wasn't Going to Do This Again?

I kind of remember me saying that I wasn't going to use this fabric again. Well here I am. I guess when you hit a clearance sale anything is possible. I struck it rich this summer with clearance fabrics from Hancock's. I can't even remember how much fabric I purchased. It was well over fifty yards. Most of the fabric I purchased for $1.00 a yard. That is correct. Can't pass that up. None of it was cheap (crummy) fabric. This satin charmeuse was one of the fabrics off the dollar table. I bought what was left on the bolt, five yards maybe.

This charmeuse was even more slippery than the last pillowcase I made for Ashton. I wouldn't have made this if she weren't my niece, my goddaughter and the fabric was ubber cheap. I got a message from her that she loves it. She loves silky, satiny bed linens.

The font is called Gracie and it's from Embrotique.

Are We There Yet?

My daughter Whitney actually put the bug in my ear for this theme. This is Kayla's August pillowcase. Whitney had come across this blog article for a road trip pillowcase. I really liked the idea. I'll eventually make one of those for Kayla but I wanted to do the road trip theme for a summer pillowcase. After a little poking around on the internet, I found this fabric from Maywood Studios. This fabric was stuck in my brain which was unfortunate. I'd like to buy local but couldn't find anything that fit my theme. With shipping, I spent $25 for one pillowcase. Yikes! I'm going to try to refrain from doing that again. Lucky for me, I only have three months left on my Pillowcase of the Month Club. I have the June and October fabric. I just need the September fabric.

As with most of my sewing and embroidery projects, I spend way too much time researching. I have over 500 embroidery fonts and I tried to find a font that matched. I didn't have anything that matched so then I went searching True Type Fonts on the internet that I could pull into my software. I found one that was just about a perfect match for the script on the fabric. After putting it through my embroidery software, I wasn't happy with the quality. I don't have manual digitizing, just auto digitizing and a lot of times, that doesn't produce a great product. So I went back thru my fonts and decided to use the Cartoon Me font from 8CAAP.

 I guess my reality wasn't as great as my vision. I auditioned lots of embroidery threads and decided on the beige-y yellow color. That was a mistake. I put browns and reds up to the blue fabric and didn't like it. I put black up to the thread and didn't like it. Oh well.

Wild Kingdom Pillowcase

Does everyone know about Wild Kingdom? My dad watched that every week. Now, I'm kind of old. Way back then, we had one tv and four channels. Television was pretty boring and there was nothing worse than having my dad watch Wild Kingdom AND Lawrence Welk. I didn't give him any crap about it. He worked hard during the week. Anyway, this pillowcase takes us to the savannah. I have three different fabrics and prints.

I had some the silky leopard fabric in my sewing room. My niece Ashton is spending the summer with us. She came into my sewing room and commented that she wanted a pillowcase out of the fabric. Lucky for her, I bought plenty. I actually bought it to make a little pajama set for her little sister.

I can't say this was fun. It went together quick. But your probably shouldn't use stretchy, silky fabric for a pillowcase. If you're up for the challenge, just make sure you have plenty of pins to keep it stable.

The font I used is one of my favorites. It's Harrington from 8 Claws and a Paw.

Pillowcase of the Month Club Continues

These pillowcases have been done for a while. I just need to get back into the habit of writing a blog article. These are the May and July pillowcases. No, I haven't started the June pillowcase yet even though June is just about finished.

The May pillowcase fabric came from Hancock's. The font is Summer Time from 8 Claws and a Paw.

The fabric for the 4th of July pillowcase is from the M'Liss Celebrate USA collection. Kayla name was made with two different fonts. The large letter K is from Embroidery Library and her name is made with the Santa's Sleigh font from Jolson's Designs.