Pillowcases

Creating pillowcases has been the rage for a while.  I have just never created a pillowcase because I thought that there were enough pillowcases around from when people purchase sheet sets.  We had a lot of pillowcases around for a while and then I took them to the men's rescue mission.

But, I had a pillow that was extra long and the pillowcase on it was threadbare.  Instead of trying to shop for a pillowcase that would fit the special sized pillow, I decided to just create my own pillowcase.

 

 

While I was creating my pillowcase, Keegan, the 3 1/2 year old, came to see what I was doing.  He told me he wanted his own pillowcases out of his fabric.  The fabric is Little Golden Books fabric. 

I didn't want to leave Dillon out so I made him a set of pillowcases too.  They have a green zinger.  Keegan's pillowcases have a red zinger.  They have to be able to tell their stuff apart.

 

 

Washoe Quilt Shop in Washoe, MT is going out of business so they were having an inventory reduction sale.  I purchased quite a bit of fabric.  This yellow Little Golden Books fabric was carried around by Keegan for a while in the store.  He told me it was his fabric.  It did work out well that I made him pillowcases soon after we purchased the fabric out of "his" fabric.

Block Exchange

These are the blocks I created for block exchange this month for the Yellowstone Valley Quilt Guild.

Dog Beds

I have been collecting my scraps.  Another lady has also been giving me her scraps.  I finally got organized and created 7 dog beds for the shelter in Billings, MT.

Let It Snow - #17 September

Trackside Quilting in Laurel got the Ho Ho Ho Let It Snow Art to Heart by Nancy Halvorsen book in stock in August.  As part of their trunk show at the Rocky Mountain Sewing Festival in Billings, MT at the Shrine the last weekend of September, I created the Let It Snow quilt from that book.

I worked really hard to get all of the points to be perfect.  But the seams were bulky so the iron did something to the fabric.  I don't know if the iron burned the fabric or just got the seams dirty.  When I look closely, it makes me frustrated.  After creating this quilt, someone mentioned that I should have been using finer thread - 60 weight rather than the 40 weight I was using.  There is another quilt in the Ho Ho Ho Let It Snow book that Keegan picked.  It has just one snowman and many snow flakes so I might try the snow flakes again with the thinner thread.

I also had to use buttons for the eyes and the belly of the snowman.  I did not appreciate buttons at all.  I do not think they added enough to this quilt to make them worth the trouble.  I would have rather appliqued eyes and buttons on the snowman.  Or I could have thread painted eyes and buttons on.  But I was following the pattern since it was a store sample so I put buttons on like a good kid.  Dillon, the 18 month old, really gave the buttons a tug when the quilt was on the floor and I was trying to take a picture of the quilt.  Even though I did not appreciate putting the buttons on, I guess I must have secured them well because they did not come off when Dillon tugged on them.

I think this quilt is super cute.  It did take longer to piece than I expected because there are 3 different types of blocks - snowmen, trees, and snow flakes.

Community Quilts

I turned in 14 quilts to Quilt By Association this month for their community quilts drive.  I received a prize of a charm pack.
Most of the quilts that I turned in were about 44" x 44".  I had created them for the Thread Fusion demo that I did for the Longarm group at Trackside Quilting in Laurel in May.

 

 

 

Fun dragon flies that were part of the Thread Fusion demo.

 

Using positive and negative space, I quilted really densely to get sea horses.

We did a block exchange at one of the retreats that I went to in Red Lodge.  My block had white in it and that made it an anomaly so one of the ladies suggested that I fracture it.  It's a cool idea.

 Then there were some quilts that I turned in that were just the rest of the flannel blocks sewn together with a denim border.  I practiced just quilting whatever on it.  I am not a very spontaneous quilter so I tried to look at the fabric as I was quilting and just quilt what I thought at the time.  It was an interesting exercise.

 

 

 

Many years ago, I took a quilting class from Karen Parker.  We used this example block to quilt different stuff in a nine patch to get different ideas of what we could do with a simple block.  I thought the block was too nice to just toss so I put binding on it and gave it to Community Quilts.

 

I thought that I would put a real dent in the fabric that I have collected for Community quilts but I still have the same 3 boxes as when I started this endeavor.  The boxes are not heaping any more so that is a good sign.