Pillow Talk

Har har. ;) I love pillows. Lots. Enthusiastically. This weekend I made five pillow cases and, gasp, not one is meant for me! First, I made the fiance's birthday present. He has an old and beloved Snoopy bedding set which is slowly but steadily coming apart. So I decided to give him a new set of pillow cases with the cutie because we all need a little snoopy in our lives. They're for the smaller pillow which up to now has had to make do with the German standard 80cm x 80cm pillow cases which are double the size. Personally, these small pillows aren't enough pillow for me, not enough to cuddle with, but he likes to have one of them and a standard one. Sneak peak.

I can barely wait to give them to him. It's the first time I'll give him something sewn by me, actually. Eep. Still some three weeks to go, though. Weird, I'm seriously ahead of my game at the moment present-wise, considering I've also already finished an appliqued pillow case for my teenaged cousin and her birthday isn't until another five weeks. One of my Dresdens has finally found just the right place. As I don't have a pillow inset sized 40cm x 40 cm, so you'll have to look at this and the others flat. Sorry.

 
Despite being pretty exhausted, I still managed to spend some time on the quilts. I spray basted the baby one on Saturday and quilted it today, mainly stitching in the ditch but also accenting the blue diagonals as Quilting in the Cold suggested. Thanks for the splendid idea! I'm really pleased with it so far. The binding has been attached to the front and I now have some soothing hand sewing to look forward to on this week's evenings. Spray basting the toddler quilt was my final action this Sunday before cleaning up my sewing space (read: the living room) and calling this weekend officially over. Time for some TV and an early night.

Before focusing on the quilts, I used up some of the cut-offs and extra squares to make matching pillow cases for each on Saturday, both backed with the helicoptre facbric. They came out so cute, don't you think?

 

 

No matter the effort, this project is making me really happy and I hope the quilts will be cherished for a long long time by the boys.

I'll link up this post with Jenna's Manic Monday Linky Party at SewHappyGeek.

Quilt Tops Progress

Starting on Thursday evening I managed to finish both quilt tops over Easter and I must say that I'm pretty pleased with their look so far.

They'll now have to hang side by side for a while until I can make time to quilt and bind them, very likely a fortnight. Shame, really, as I enjoy this project despite the amount of work going into it, but this gives me time to consider two important questions. 1) What thread colour to use for the quilting? The backings will feature the train and helicopter prints on white respectively. 2) How to quilt them?  I certainly want to keep it simple but cannot really make up my mind at this moment. Stitch in the ditch or beside the seams? What do you think?

With all those hours of piecing and ironing and more piecing I needed a quick fix project, too, and decided to make something for my mum. Her living room got a bit of a makeover recently and she asked me for one or two table runners. I knew exactly what I'd make and that I had to use an Echo print.

The back is all brown and I sewed the binding by hand on Saturday and Sunday evening. I love it so much and would totally keep it to myself. Generally, I'm not into table runners at all and my tables go bare, but this one could make me change my mind about them.

Did you find time to sew anything?

WIP - Baby and Toddler Quilts

Pretty much no sewing took place this weekend. Disappointing? Not really because I had a great birthday party on Friday which included quality time with wonderful friends, amazing presents (many sewing related), tons of tasty food, and some rocking karaoke. Saturday was spent lazing about, although I managed to squeeze some fabric shopping and washing into that. A gift card for my favourite shop convinced me to brave the awful weather and I needed to buy batting for the quilts, anyways. Yes, I spent my birthday gift card no more than 18 hours after receiving it. New record. To my excuse, it paid for a much needed re-stash of the little yellow florines from Lotta Jansdotter's Echo collection - I'd only stashed half a yard as I'm usually not that much into yellows, but I love these and have already so many projects on my mind and cut into what I had so I absolutely had to get more. A row of typewriters on teal from the Ruby Star collection was also added to my stash. They're just too cute and I've been eyeing for a while. You see, I practised constraint, only a further brown and red solid found their way into my bag because they are needed for a birthday present and table runners for my mum/Echo pillows for me.

Today was dedicated to cutting the fabric for my current project, two boy quilts. More than 3.5 hours of cutting, pretty exhausting but it's nice to get it done and move onto the sewing stage quickly.

It took quite a bit of time trying to come up with satisfying layouts. The baby quilt - please imagine blue borders on top and bottom, too, my table is too small.

 

And the toddler quilt. I like it but might change it a little, mixing the prints a bit more as I did on the baby quilt. We'll see. I will definitely swap the two misplaced white trains on the left for blue ones. Rather glad I took this pic and spotted the mistake before sewing!

The only sewing this weekend: assembling the 6 cm wide binding, seven measly seams. But it's all pressed and folded and wound up, already, 4.4 metres and 6.6 metres, respectively.

I'm prepared for the next stage, the rows are compiled into numbered stacks, and I might sew a couple of them together in the evenings should I find the time.

An awesome weekend full of laughter, smiles, and fun. How did you spend yours?