Adding to Stash & Week's Goals

http://quiltsbyq.blogspot.com/2010/05/scrappy-pillow-1-done.htmlA pretty uneventful addition to The Stash the week.  I didn't have time to order online so I just picked up some solid colors at the box store - Joanne fabrics.


Like I said nothing eventful.  They're just some solid Moda cotton that I picked up while out running other errands.  I'll have to make up for such a bland addition to The Stash this coming week :).  FYI I'm not a big fan of Joanne's for print fabrics.  They're good when you're in a crunch and need something simple - like the solid colors.

So, along with some other Weekly Goals for the upcoming week I will HAVE to had additions to The Stash as one of the goals.


It's going to be a little tricky trying to complete the upcoming goals because I'll be out of town and unable to do any actual quilting for 2 days this week.  Maybe quilt like mad for the days that I am home and work on designing the next projects while I'm on the road??  I decided to put the design of my kitchen floormats in the goals for this coming week so I have something to work on while away from my sewing room.

The results of last weeks goals:

A little bit better than the previous week's results.  Notice that I didn't even bother putting Patchy Pillow #2 on this coming week's goal.  I know I will be able to work on it....or have the desire at this point.  I guess I'm just really enjoining Patchy Pillow #1 and don't really have the need for two of them at this point.  I'll try to finish up very soon though.  As much as it does happen, I try not to have unfinished projects floating for too long.  The longer it gets, the lesser the chance of it being finished.

Scrappy Pillow #1 DONE!

Yeh!  I had some 'spare time' and got a chance to finish #1 of 2 Scrappy Pillows.  This had been one of those projects that took a little longer than expected and put on the back burner.

For such a impromptu project, I think the pillows turned out much better than I expected, take a peak:


A closeup of the nearly made pillow. Recognize all the fabrics from my other projects? :)


This was one of the reasons why the pillow took me a while to make - trying to figure out how to sew on 'invisible' zippers.  The ones I had around the house were a little longer than the pillow, so I had to do some fancy tucking and cutting to get it to fit.



A little tucking and a little trimming and the zipper is finally ready for use.  This was a picture of the completed zipper installed - it was taken after I already sew on the binding, but you could still see the fancy tuck work on the far right of the picture.


I didn't have pillow inserts that fit the pillow, so I had to make some new ones.  This part went pretty quickly.  Here's a quick rundown of the pillow insert.

1) Cut two pieces of fabric about the same size as the pillow.
2) Sew 3 edges together, leaving the 4th edge open.


3) Turn right side out, so the 3 sewn raw edges are now in the inside of the insert
4) Stuff with whatever pillow stuffing you want - think I had a polyester filling.
5) Sew the 4th edge close - this could remain a raw edge, or you could do some folding to cover the raw edge before sewing it down

I kept the 4th edge unfolded.  I just use a straight edge stitch about 1/2"-1".


After the pillow insert is done, insert it into the pillowcase, zip and voila!


I like to use a pretty full pillow insert, giving the pillow an overstuffed look....nice and big and cuddly.

The pillow is nice enough to use in the living room for decoration, but for now it's in the boys room being used as a throwing toy :) haha what else is new right? :P

Here's a closeup of the binding I used around the pillow.  I machine sewed it to the BACK of the pillow and then hand bind it to the front.


A view of the back.  I used a flannel patterned cotton print.


Another 2 views of the pillow:

Horizontal Stripes?


or Vertical Stripes?

Scrappy Project Continues - Scrappy Pillow

For my scrappy project I decided to make a Scrappy Pillow.   It's also one of my Spring goals to make 2 items that are NOT a quilt this spring.

I made a strip about 14 yards of 2" wide straps. I cut the strip into 22" pieces.  This created about 32 pieces of 22" long and 2" wide fabrics.

I arranged the pieces together to make sure the same colors did not always end up on the same area on the pillow top.  

Making sure that the colors were arranged in a flattering manner.  At first I thought I had enough for 3 pillow tops, but after playing around with it a little I decided that it's better to make just 2 pillows - each a perfect square.

There were enough pieces to create two pillow tops - each 16 piece.  My goal was to have two perfect square pillows.  Just to make sure that there were enough strips to make a square, I only worked on one of the pillows in case I needed to make adjustments to the other.  The impromptu project :).

After sewing and pressing I had my perfect square!

I was so glad it worked out to be a square.  I didn't want to make the pillow any smaller since I wanted an over-sized pillow. To piece it together I used a generous 1/4" seam sew.  

This piece of the project was only the pillow top.  I wanted something more significant than the pieced part to be the pillow top.  I decided to sandwich the pillow top with some batting and add a packing to it - all JUST for the pillow top.

Measuring out the backing:

Then adding the batting in between the backing and pillow top:

What's next? Pinning the sandwich together for quilting, quilting and then decided which fabric to use for the back of the pillow and binding.  I also have to decide what to do with the pillow enclosure.  With kids I want to make the pillow top easy to remove in case I needed to wash it often.  Zipper?  Buttons? Velcro?  Not sure - I'll look around for ideas and hopefully I could finish up this project before spring ends :).