Yearly Archives: 2017

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Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. Chag sameach! We give gifts to our kids each night. I have paper gift bags that I reuse each year, but I've been wanting to make reusable fabric gift bags that would last even longer. I was planning to make Jeni Baker's Lined Drawstring Bags that I mentioned in my gift ideas post. I've made them many times and they are fabulous! But after making the pillowcase using the magical burrito method last week, I decided it would be faster and easier to make pillowcase-style gift bags. The gifts I have for the kids are mostly small, so I opted for a miniature-size pillowcase. I used a fat quarter of the main fabric and a 22" x 8" strip for the cuff. This ended up making long skinny bags, but they will work. I worried that a narrower piece of fabric for the cuff would have made it challenging to make the burrito. You can see in my first couple pictures that the burritos are pretty full.

Here's a peek of the inside where you can see the purple fabric folded up in the orange burrito. To see the full magic of the process, be sure to watch Crafty Gemini's video tutorial.

And here are my finished pillowcase-style gift bags. They aren't identical in size, but they are each about 9 1/2" x 20". I think I will make fabric ties to tack onto the bags so they can easily be tied closed (and we won't lose the ties).

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My daughter is 5 1/2 and has been quilting for a year and a half. R has just finished her third quilt. Her first quilt was made entirely from my stash and her brother's stash, but soon after she started building her fabric stash. Whenever she visited a quilt shop with me I let her pick 1 or 2 fat quarters or fat eighths. I think her stash building began on our trip to Portland, OR. (There are some great quilt shops there!) I share my stash with my kids. They have free choice of most of my fabric and just have to ask first, but I think it's also nice that they have a bit of fabric that is their own.

I've mentioned her stash on the blog and on IG and people have been curious about it, so I thought it would be fun to give you a little tour. This might not be 100% of it, but it's close and it's everything she had put away in her box.

Probably the biggest difference in our stashes is cat fabric. I'm pretty sure I have none. Oh wait, there's one piece in a Patchwork City BOM kit. I digress. She is drawn to cat fabric. My favorite is the sushi cat fabric. Cause it's hilarious! That was an acquisition from Hip Stitch in Albuquerque, NM when we went out for Balloon Fiesta in October 2016. Unfortunately the sushi cats haven't made it into a project yet. I should point that out to her. Many of her cat prints went onto the back of her most recent quilt. She also used her whole piece of bunny fabric in that backing.

She also likes purple and pink. The one on the top was a print we each picked up in a shop in Portland, OR. Many of these made it into Striped Quilt, a doll quilt R made from her friend Ellie.

What's not to love about a rainbow print? Or a stripe? 'Nuf said. She used the second one from the bottom to make a pillow last summer.

And the rest of her fabric is this little random assortment. She played a year of t-ball so she digs the baseball prints. The top print is my remnant from the dress I made for her and the shirt I made for her brother. The hot air balloon print is also from Hip Stitch, and she used it to hand sew this sweet little doll dress. The two in the top right were a gift from a couple of the kids in the round robin she participated in. And the two in the bottom right are small bits from my stash.

I look forward to seeing what she makes next!

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I've made a few pillowcases in my time and I've always used a serger. Our BAMQG gift exchange was yesterday and we were asked to bring our gift in a pillowcase for donation to the Happiness is a Warm Quilt drive for the fire victims in Santa Rosa and Napa Counties. Everyone was talking about the burrito method for making a pillowcase (with french seams), so I decided to try it out. I used Jaye's blog post to guide me, but others used this YouTube video. I omitted the accent fabric and chose two prints from my stash.

I LOVE this method! It's quick and easy and the french seams make it feel so fancy. It's a little hard to get a photo of the seams, but the magic is in the fact that there is no exposed edge of fabric.

I wish I had timed how long it took me. All I know is that it was fast! Tada! (My cuff fabric is a single colorblocked piece of fabric with six different shades of green.)

And I used my pillowcase to wrap the gift I gave yesterday. Now I'm debating making pillowcase style Hanukkah gift bags (to reuse every year) instead of the lined drawstring bags I thought I'd make.

What are your favorite magically fast tutorials?

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