Tuesday, June 12, 2012

out of season

I've been in my sewing room a bit lately. First, to sew up PJ's for my boy, and then later, his robe. (Neither of which were photographed before being sent off. Bummer.) At any rate, having to do those projects got me back into the swing of things where sewing was concerned, and I'm so glad.

Last night, while watching a little Netflix and putting blanket binding on the fleece blanket and pillow case for my missionary boy, I found myself with more time left of the show I was watching, and nothing left to do on the project. I could have turned it off, gone to bed, and finished the show on my Kindle Fire, but, there I was, surrounded by unfinished projects, so I stayed.

Floating near the surface of those unfinished projects was a little Halloween pillow cover I'd not quite managed to finish last fall. I'd done all the stitching, and put on the borders, even chosen the backing. Where I got stalled was in how to finish the pillow. I reasoned that it was going to be easier to store a pillow cover than a whole pillow, so I wanted to be able to remove it when the seasons changed. But how best to do that?

My backing piece was slightly longer than it needed to be, so I'd pretty much settled on some sort of overlapped opening in the back, perhaps tied with ribbons. Good idea, and something I'd done before, but I wanted just exactly the right finishing on the outer edge, and the right ribbon to tie it with. Hence the stalling.

While mulling it over last night, my eyes lit on the exact right color of bias binding, and then a bit of ribbon, just a scrap really, that I thought would do.

Twenty minutes later, I had this:
(in retrospect, I think the ribbons should be a bit closer to center)
And I was done!
I know it's totally off-season, and I'll have to put it away until October. But it's finished, it's no longer taking up space in the sewing room, and I have a cute seasonal pillow cover!

The embroidery pattern is something I've made before, for a friend, and then stitched up for myself later. (Can't find it online at the moment, or I'd link to the designer/source - will update if I find it.)

I like to use a travel size pillow insert for decorative pillows like this. Easy to find at just about any fabric store, and very handy.

For the back, my piece happened to be about 3" too long, so I folded it in thirds, creased it, and cut off one third for the top portion. (I could have cut it in half, but I like thirds.) I then serged the upper edge of the bottom portion, just to make it so I didn't have to worry about fraying (it won't be seen), and bound the lower edge of the top portion with double fold extra wide bias tape. I used a sort of peach/coral color that I thought blended nicely with the Halloween colors on the front.

I overlapped the two back pieces, bias-bound edge on top, making the total finished length to match the front piece, and stitched the overlapped portions together at the outer edges.

Then I took the ribbon, a sheer ivory ribbon, about 1 1/2" wide and, at a guess, about a yard long (it was a scrap, likely from a package someone had given me, and I didn't measure it before I cut it up for this project), and cut it into four equal pieces, each piece being cut straight at one end and slanted at the other. I positioned them on the right side of the pillow back, two pieces to be sewn to the underside of the bound edge, the other two sewn just below these, on the lower portion of the backing.

After stitching them in place, I put the backing right sides together with the front, stitched around the whole outer edge using 1/4" seams, clipped my corners, and turned it right side out.

Slip in the pillow, tie the bows, and there you have it. Cute from either side, and ready for fall. Plus, I can use the pillow for other seasonal covers, and I can wash the cover easily - just untie the bows, slip it off, and it's ready.

Now I just need to hunt up a cute patriotic design that fits the pillow dimensions, and get that stitched up in time for the 4th.

1 comment:

jhall said...

Cute!! I love embroidery projects but they would cut into my knitting time, so I never do them....if only I could just work on fibery things all day long and didn't have to support myself.