To Make A Pillowcase

We're having a fun swap in BAMQ, a Pillow Fight! People were paired up and they got to decide on which type of pillow or pillow case to make for each other and to talk about which sort of colors they wanted too. It is really nice to have more information like this so that it's more likely your recipient will be more likely to actually like and use the thing you end up making for them. Hopefully my swap partner will 

enjoy these fabric selections.

I used these directions to make a double banded pillowcase with French Seams so that there's no raw edges to worry about when you're done. Unfortunately the ads on that website are super intrusive, so be warned.

You cut WOF pieces, 27" for the body, 10" for the cuff, 2.5" for the band. Press the 2.5" band piece in half lengthwise, wrong sides together. 

Stack the fabrics in this order, all right-side up, aligning the raw edges. First the Cuff fabric, then the Body Fabric, and then the folded Band piece.  You roll up the Body fabric towards the raw edge. as seen here. I temporarily pinned this here before the next step.

This is probably the weirdest part to wrap your mind around, after you've rolled up the body fabric you fold up the other edge of the Cuff fabric (right sides together) and align that raw edge with all the others. 

Note: Only one of the raw edges of the Body will be in this first seam that you sew, the other is in the rolled-up part. (that was the part that boggled me for a bit).

I moved all the pins I'd previously used to pin this final sandwich roll together. Pin together all those aligned raw edges and then sew a 1/4" seam along this long WOF raw edge.

It's a whole lot of layers, just make sure you're not catching the rolled-up Body fabric that's in the middle of the sandwich roll as you sew.

It's looks like a little taco/burrito kind of thing, all sewed up along one edge.

Then you get to turn it all right side out and see if you got the fabric stack ordered correctly.

All Very Wrinkly of course, but the whole thing needs pressing now anyways. Make sure you press the Band seam first before doing the top folded over edge of the Cuff. With wrong sides together, align the raw edge and along the bottom, press the whole thing in half.

That looks much better after a little pressing. The raw edges need some trimming before proceeding.

That's better.

With right-sides together, sew a 1/4" seam starting at the top of the Cuff, and turning the corner to sew along the bottom edge.

Trim those two corners before turning the whole thing wrong side out and then pushing the corners out so they're nice and flat.

Big Reminder Here: Switch over to a 1/2" seam allowance for this last step. Be sure to check your seam width on some scraps before you start sewing & change your foot if you were using a 1/4" one before.Sew down the side and bottom with, a very nice 1/2" which contains the raw edges (aka French Seam). Turn the pillow case right side out and do a final press.And there's one of my pillowcases, all done, now to go get the second one done.And here's the two gorgeous pillowcases I got from the swap from friend Amy.

Back to HRTs

 

Back to actual sewing happening today! Finally! Woohoo! But of course I had to re-teach, re-view, and re-learn how to do the rest of the HRTs with the Bloc Loc Rulers that I cut out for the Lupine Mystery Quilt.

I referred back to the kinda tutorial I'd made for myself way back in June. This is a sort of update to that, with a big deal note to begin with: Both fabrics are right side up when you cut the pairs. Very Important for prints especially.

Flip one of the triangles, right sides together, offset the triangle tips, sew together.

Press seams to the purple.

Make sure you're using the B ruler with the B units, pay attention to which side the seam allowance is on. Trim on two sides.

Keeping the ruler locked onto the seam, spin ruler 180°, slide down to the final measurement of 2"w x 3.5"h.

Repeat with the A ruler and A units.

Okay, one set all done!

There it is, an actual thing that I sewed, and ironed and trimmed.

And then I cut and sewed a whole bunch more, but they haven't been pressed or trimmed yet.

Community Giving Binding and Tutorial

 

This is a combination of a post about getting the quilt binding done for the BAMQ Community Giving quilt AND a tutorial on how to join the ends of the binding using the The Binding Tool by TQM. This is mostly for me, so that I don't have to go watch the instruction video each time. I'm pretty sure I picked this tool up on the Free Table at a BAMQ Sew Day.

You sew on a 2.5" wide quilt binding leaving a 12" gap between your starting and ending points. And I mean as close to exactly 12" as possible. (this is one point I wasn't always the best at). If you don't measure this, it's hit or miss on whether the binding will end up being the right length.

The printing on the tool is ALWAYS face-up. The square end of the tool butts up against the spot where the stitching ends on the left, and you mark the binding with the "MARK HERE" line on the tool.

Unfold and open up the binding flat, right-side up, place the tool on the binding and align the "MARK HERE" line with the line you've marked. The binding fabric they use in the tutorial is a solid, so it's a little hard to tell which side is up so I wanted to note that mainly for myself.

Trim the binding using the angled side of the ruler. Okay, that's the left-hand side of the binding cut and ready to sew together, now moving on to the right-hand side.

Turn the ruler around, but don't turn it over, **Remember it stays Printed Side up**. Butt up the square end of the ruler to the stitching ending point. Mark the binding using the "Mark Here" line.

Spread open the binding, right side up. This is the point I've messed up so pay attention: Align the small angled edge of the ruler with the line you've marked.

Trim off using the angle of the ruler. 

It's pretty standard from here out, pin the two ends together, aligning the snub nosed ends.

Sew with a 1/4" seam. Press open.

Sew down the binding over the 12" gap you had left. You're done/

And then, when you flip over the binding, if you've got a label, don't forget to add it in. For a quilt that's going to be used and washed a lot, I don't hand-sew the binding.

There it is, all done! No gaps, no lumps, no tears or un-sewing.

I made the binding out of some of the quilt's own excess backing fabric (the green one) and a piece of fabric left from the backing of one of my quilts (the yellow one).

I hope that tutorial helps me in the future, and maybe you too if you happen to have this tool in your ruler stash.

120° Degrees

 

This is mostly for me, but here's how I did the 120° corners on the mini quilt/tablerunner. Mark a diagonal line at the corner and stop stitching on or just shy of that point. Make sure and backstitch.

This step is where we see the biggest difference in applying binding to 90° corners, when you fold the binding back over itself- align the raw-edge bottom of the binding straight with the bottom edge of the next section around the corner you're working on of the item being bound.

The next step is to fold the binding down back over itself,  and then pinning down that fold. 

Start stitching (and backstitch) on that same point where you stopped before, at the center diagonal of the corner and 1/4" away from the raw edge.

Repeat those steps with all the corners, join your binding ends as per usual.

I sewed the binding down from the front by machine as this is going to be a frequently machine washed item. The trick to this is to go more slowly than usual, and take your time folding the binding on the corners.

Some closeups of how the binding looks.

I like how a new word is suggested because of the piecing, It looks like "dictrum" maybe?

More views of the words fabric and the quilting.

This turned out to be a fun project, and now I don't have these pieced triangles sitting around.

Here's how the corner binding looks, I did a needle-down pivot and stitched into the binding join at each corner a few stitches and then back stitched, pivoted in the next direction and .

It seems to make it a little flatter.

Pretty pleased with how this turned out.