Quick Sew Fun – A Potholder

I admit, that before the baby came along I was a bit spoiled. The other kids were old enough that, although they needed me, I could spend a lot of time doing what I wanted. Boy has that all changed! This time last year I’d finished three quilts. This year I have quilt blocks…lol.

Well, I decided Saturday that I need a project I could finish. I’ve loved making the block of the month blocks for the Modern Half Square Triangle Sampler and had two extra half square triangles in navy leftover from my last block. I decided to pair it with some of the orange and yellow from the other quilt blocks since I love the colors together so much. I also decided to sew the HST’s into QST’s just for giggles.

I was planning on outline quilting but when I’d finished, my orange and yellow blocks looked so plain so I quilted a nice double X in the middle of them to match the quilting on the Quarter Square Triangles.

Decided to go with yellow for the back of the potholder as well. Is anyone else in love with Cotton + Steel fabrics? I seriously love every single one!

 

Aye Pirate-y Pillowcase

My sister has three boys. Two have summer birthdays, approximately two weeks apart and the other has a January birthday. Last year for the summer boys, I made a few roll up pillowcases as gifts. Six months later, when the youngest has his birthday, I totally forgot what I’d done for the others. Anyway, he got a really cool handmade sword that the father of one of my co-workers makes.

This year, we vacationed with my sister and her boys. The older two brought their awesome handmade pillowcases and Sawyer, bless his heart, had a brown pillowcase.

“Aunt Bethany,” he asked sweetly, “can you make me a really cool pillowcase?”

Yes. I felt guilty.

Late last week, while the boys were staying with my parents, I whipped out a pillowcase for him.

All pirate-y and very much Sawyer’s kind of thing.

I think he liked it.

 

Here’s a link to a youtube tutorial by The Crafty Gemini, to make a similar pattern (I used different measurements so there is some room for adjustments!)

The Roll Up Pillowcase – A Sewing Quickie!

Sometimes you just need a project you can whip up in a half hour. Maybe you are like me and spend most of you time making quilts that take days, months or years to complete and you would just like to finish something fast. Maybe you only have nap time to sew. Maybe you only like quick projects because you have attention span issues (been there!) Whatever your reason, this weekend, I played with a few quick projects and it was so much fun!

I’ve already blogged about a multi-apron that took less than an hour to complete. Now I’d like to share the roll up pillowcase!

I’ve made several of these pillowcases before. My local quilt shop has participated in several charity events where we sew pillowcases to donate. I also made two of my nephews pillowcases last year for their birthday. It’s such a simple pattern, I keep saying I’m going to make lots of these for around the house and I never seem to get around to it.

Today, while looking for a quick project, I decided it was time to make one for our house. I hit up my stash and found these fun Jennifer Paganelli, Amy Butler and Sara Jane fabrics and seriously, how cute are they? (And they totally match my kid but that was just a happy accident!)

Although I didn’t actually use the tutorial posted (I went from memory) here is a Crafty Gemini youtube tutorial on how it works!

I used slightly different measurements. For the cuff I used 10″ of fabric and for the trim I used 4″ of fabric. Other than that, this is the same as my method!

And it made one eight year old girl in my house some kind of happy!!