Sewing

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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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BAMQG had a kitchen themed gift exchange for the holiday party. My partner, Gerre, wanted an orange apron. After extensive searching through many, many apron patterns I settled on the Pretty Ditty Apron by Jaime Christina after seeing this cute version posted by Hip Stitch on Instagram. (Definitely visit Hip Stitch if you are in Albuquerque, NM. Great shop. Great people.)

Orange is not a color I stash much of, so I visited my local quilt shop to find just the right combination of fabrics. In the end I chose the butterfly print because Gerre had also mentioned Low Volume in the color category. I was concerned that a low volume fabric would show stains easily, but I liked that this print had a low(ish) volume background. I decided it would be a good option for the bust and ties of the apron. It took me about five hours to sew, not including cutting time. There was an optional ruffle for the bottom hem which I chose not to include. And the apron is reversible with two pockets on each side. The reverse side features Moda Grunge fabric... I need to use more of that.

 

The party and gift exchange was today. I knew Gerre would like the apron, but it was fun to see her wear it for the rest of the party. Here she is!

 

I received an iPad stand, which I'm excited to have for using while I'm cooking. And my daughter is thrilled that she can use it while she watched Cupcake Wars. ;-) She may have told my husband that the iPad stand was for her.

We are into week two of the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge. For me it could be called the 31 Day Late Night Blog Writing Challenge. ;-) Thanks for reading. Check out others who are participating in the challenge by following the link to Cheryl's blog.

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It's Back to School this week for my household. My son went back Monday and my daughter returns tomorrow. This is why, as you may have realized, that it's nearly Thursday... though technically still Wednesday here. Today kind of snuck up on me. I'm hoping that with the kids back in school I can get into a better routine where I can keep track of what day of the week it is, among other things. :-)

As I pulled together all of what I've been working on in the past week I realized that this Back to School week has been very kid-centric in my sewing as well!

Cloth Napkins for School

I send cloth napkins in my kids' lunches. We have a couple dozen 10" solid napkins that I use for that. This year in first grade my son is required to bring a 12" cloth napkin each day as well, to use as a placemat. I had him choose five fabrics from his fabric stash so I could make these placemat napkins and followed this tutorial for Mitered Corner Napkins by Erin at Sewbon. I cut mine 14 1/2" square to finish at 12". True to procrastinator form, I've been sewing one each evening since Sunday. I keep meaning to finish the others the next day, but well... I haven't even done today's yet and it's 10pm. Here's the first one I finished. I just love his tiger fabric and wonder what he'll use the rest of it for.

 

My Son's Twin Sized Quilt

My son is working on his fourth quilt, a twin sized bed quilt for his sister. He's two seams away from the quilt top being finished and I think we've decided that I will be quilting it for him. Here's a glimpse of his project. We had to scramble a bit to add an additional row and column, since it ended up smaller than twin. He pulled all his fabrics from my stash. I just had to order a bit more of the solid greens.

 

My Daughter's First Quilt

And while I'm on this subject of helping my kids with their projects, my daughter finished her first quilt this week. More on her big finish soon, but she's already sleeping under it.

 

To Do Cards

With two quilt finishes in a week (I count my daughter's since I'm a full time assistant), it's time to regroup and figure out what my sewing priorities are. Unless you're new here, you probably know that I'm a "lots of WIPs" kind of gal. I'm pretty organized, but I'm still overwhelmed sometimes. Right now I'm looking at a couple upcoming swap deadlines, plus some challenge quilts. I decided that I needed a system to be able to see what my priorities are. My planner is great, but it's just not in my face enough. So, I decided to use index cards for each project. I'll be adding the deadlines (self-imposed or non) for the ones that are time sensitive, and that will help me focus my time on the "right" project. The advantage of the cards is that I'll be able to pin them up on my design wall, so there's no forgetting what I should be working on. I'll let you know how it goes. So far I've listed out all the projects.

 

Secret Sewing

Back to the kid related sewing, I've got a secret project in the works, here's a peak at just one of my fabrics. Everything is cut out on this one as of this evening.

 

Race Car Quilt

I'm also getting to work on this race car quilt. I've had to rework my design a bit since my backing fabric is a bit smaller than I need it to be. I added the yellow fabric tonight and my cutting list is all ready to go so I hope to get this one cut out tomorrow.

 

Upcoming Blog Hop

The last thing on my mind at the moment is the upcoming New Block Blog Hop. I'm not sure yet if I'll use one of the designs in my sketchbook or if I'll come up with something new... but it's getting close to crunch time. I love the colors and can't wait to see what people come up with.

2016 New Quilt Bloggers

Thanks for visiting!

I'm linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday.