January 13, 2012

BOYS' PILLOWCASES


Pillowcases are a great beginning sewing project. It may seem "cliche" but I love to start my sewing students with a basic pillowcase. It not only is a relatively quick project, but it teaches five very good, very essential skills: straight stitches, pivoting, zigzag overcast, pressing, hem.

In my home, I am always mixing and matching fabrics for one project. I had just finished three boys' Memory Quilts and had less whole pieces left over than I usually require for a whole pillowcase. My boys needed pillowcases to match go with (I don't believe things neeed to be matchy-matchy - they just need to go with) their quilts. Some of the prints I had large enough scraps of were these. (I had just found them at my local Wal*Mart)


I had enough of the middle one to do a front and a back, but only enough of the other two to do one front/back of each. (BTW, each front/ back is 22" x 36"). So I mixed em up and came up with this combination.


Not really rocket science but a fun way to combine the three prints into two pillowcases.


Then I needed to do one more. I had found one of those "panels" (also at Wal*Mart) that normally get made into a baby-blanket-sized quilt (it's one yard of 45" wide fabric or 36" x 45" - which is what I require for a folded standard-size pillowcase). Perfect size. It had TowMater next to Lightning McQueen.

Hopefully you can see that between the two sides is where the fold is. Where the center of the full panel would be if not folded. Make sense? You can see Lightning McQueen's nose rolling around to the other side...

They each took up half the panel so a "back-and-front" pillow was perfect!


We have three!


Now they are complete! They have a great time trading and switching them out!


He sure loves them! Also note the "Cars" socks - didn't even plan that!


What kind of pillowcases could you make?



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