No Exposed Seams Pillowcase Tutorial

You all need to know that I went to the gym every day so far. I am excited to weigh in on Monday at WW. After the gym last night PTM and I went back to her house and we did a photo tutorial on how to make a pillowcase with no exposed seams. I took a lot of pictures so here goes and I hope it all makes sense!

The sizes of fabric I am using are for a standard sized pillow. You will use a 36" piece for the body if you are making king size pc. Also VERY IMPORTANT, make certain you back stitch to secure your stitching as you are making these. You wouldn't want your pc to pull apart. We washed and pressed all the fabric before beginning. PTM told me I *had* to do this and for me this was the most tedious part of the whole thing! I NEVER wash my fabric first. Variable shrinkage can cause a real problem with these, so ...just DO IT!

First you will need at least 2 different fabrics (3 if you make the accent). We used 3 and did the accent. You will cut the body of the pc at 27" X WOF (width of fabric). The cuff will be cut
9" X WOF. You can cut your accent piece anything from ~ 1 1/4" - 2" depending how wide you would like your accent to be. We cut ours at 1 1/4" to begin. after you have them cut you will lay them on top of each other (folded in half) to cut off the salvages on all the fabric. You do this at the same time so the widths are all the same! Clever, eh? Pauline (PTM) told me about that! We had already cut ours so I used a different one to show you how we did that.

Take the accent and fold it in half, wrong sides together, just like you do binding and press. Open your cuff and lay your accent piece on top of the right of the cuff. matching raw edges, fold facing you. (If you are not using a accent piece, skip this step!)


Then you will take your body of the PC and line up the raw edge to the cuff/accent piece with the right side down. Next you pin all the layers together across the top.

PTM is big on pinning. It helps everything stay in place.

Now you bring the bottom of the pc up near the top where you just pinned. Not all the way though and then you roll the rest until you are about half way or a little more up the cuff, like in the photo on the right

Then you bring the raw edge of your cuff up over your roll and match it to the pinned top. You will then make sure all the edges are even and pin them all together. We just moved the pins we had already pinned with from the underneath area and pinned all the layers together.

It should look like this photo.

You will then take your sausage to the sewing machine and sew a 1/4" seam along the pinned edge. We used a walking foot to keep all the layers feeding evenly. This was especially important when I did a flannel one.

This part is kinda fun. You will pull the inside out of the tube. It is like magic, you'll see!


Here you see the front and the back of the cuff area, no raw edges on the front or the back!

Take the pc to your iron and give it a good press from the back at the seam line, turn it over and do the same from the front side and then press the crease into the cuff where it is folded along the edge. We did it this way so there didn't end up being any unwanted creases pressed into the cuff.

You will need to take your pc and fold it with the wrong sides together (wst), pin and sew a 1/4" seam along the long edge (side) of the pc. I like to begin sewing at the cuff end so I can make sure my cuff seam matches. I would not like it if they didn't match when I was finished!!

After you are finished sewing this seam you may see some stray threads, use your rotary cutter and ruler to trim them. If you don't you may catch them in the next part and will see them on the finished edge of your pc. If you don't have any, you don't have to trim.

You will then fold your pc right sides together (rst) and pin and sew a 1/2" seam down the side you just did the quarter inch seam. Again, I like to begin at the cuff end and sew down. It is kind of bulky (especially when you use flannel ) where the cuff/accent seams meet. You may have to push/pull a little to get over the "hump"of seams. You are basically making a "French seam" and enclosing your quarter inch seam inside of it.

This is what your side seam will look like on the wrong side.

You will now do a repeat of this process with the bottom of the pc. Fold the pc WST and sew a 1/4" seam, trim if there are loose threads, turn and press. At this point you will have RST and sew a 1/2" seam over the quarter inch seam you just sewed. Where the side enclosed seam and the where you will now sew meet you get this weird little fold. I tried to show you how this looks in the photo on the right. Just play with it a little bit and make it play nice because you will just be sewing right over it.

In these pics you can see that PTM started sewing right at that place rather than at the other end. She sewed with the folded area on the bottom.

Here you can see what it looks like once sewn, from the wrong side.

Now comes the TA_DA moment. Are you ready?? Turn your pc right side out...


And...TA-DA!!! You have a beautiful new pillowcase you made all by yourself!! Who would want store bought when these are so darned easy!!

I know you want to know this. The accent is loose, not sewn down, see, that's my own hand showing you that!


I hope this has been helpful! (Or at least interesting!!) If you have any questions, please email me and I will do my best to help you. I think you should be able to make these in about 20 minutes, once you make one. There are several places taking pc donations right now too. So make them as gifts, make them to donate, make them for yourself, whatever. I am using up some fabric I bought that I am no longer in love with and will probably donate some and give some to friends.

Please let me know if you make some and if this was a useful tutorial! I have a few photos from PTM's that I will share with you tomorrow. Have fun making pillowcases now!!

Guess What I Can Do?

Well, I am so very excited about the changes going on in my life at the moment! I have been wanting to lose weight and now I am making the changes to make it happen. My DD1 and I joined Weight Watchers on Monday. My friend, PTM, joined a gym and did a weight loss challenge and now she has convinced me to do the same. So I went with her last night and I am going to do the challenge with her again. She was the winner and lost over 25 pounds!! She looks fantastic. My hero!! So with the extra time I am off from the CL group this month I will be living at the gym. Wish me luck!

Last night after the gym PTM and I went back to her house and she showed me how to make the no exposed seam pillowcases. I am so excited about that! Here are my first 2. Notice how I forgot to pay attention to the fact that the fabric is directional!! What a dummy I am sometimes. Oh well, they are going to be donated so it is alright. I cut out 15 other ones and will get busy sewing them tonight or Friday night.

In addition, PTM is helping her mum move from a big house to a smaller one in Canada. Her mum had LOTS of these "Crown" canning jars. Many of them have the dates stamped on the bottoms and are from the 30s and 40s. She gave me 2 of them and interestingly, they have glass tops with metal screw rings. Some of the glass tops have the crown on them and some had rings. I took a big one (the one on the right) to put spools of thread in. Too cool, thanks PTM!!

Now I thought I would share a blog I just found that I LOVE!! It is Kerri and the name of the blog is Lovely Little Handmades. She has a wonderful blog and a fabulous ETSY shop Called Sew Deerly Loved. Please go and check her out and tell her you came from my blog.

Well I have to run so have a great day!

Laxy enjoying a bowl of snow

Here are the videos of our dumb dog, Laxy. Let me know what you think!



And this one is Jack trying to get in on that delicious snow bowl!

Oh relaxing Sunday!

That's right, I said RELAXING, and I am trying my best to make that happen. How do so many other things keep creeping into this day? I got up and DH made his usual Sunday breakfast of eggs, some kind of meat and his amazing hashbrowns (from scratch). I haven't ever shown those to you have I? Well, next Sunday I will take some pictures, I promise! So that was late, because we slept in until 9 and then we both got on our computers. Hey, my farm in Farmville isn't going to farm itself now is it? So I took care of my farm and did the dishes, and cleaned up from breakfast and got in some laundry. Now I can relax, right? NO, not just yet.

I got my sewing machine back to it's rightful place after the holidays, had DH adjust it so it sits flush in my cabinet (that only took me 5 years to accomplish) and then called PTM. Keep her in your prayers, she is struggling with moving her mom into a smaller place and downsizing all the "stuff" parents accumulate (and probably us too when we are our parents age!). It is difficult to do this from here when they are in Canada, eh? Anyway, we don't have quilting on Wed so I am going over to see her on Wed and we will make some pillowcases for charity. She is going to teach me the "no seam" method. This necessitates some fabric choices and washing. She told me I had to wash everything I want to use. So back to the basement to sort and wash. UGH, then dry and iron. What was I thinking??

Relax now? NO, not yet. Go change loads of laundry and then it is time to list my red coin quilt on ETSY. It takes more time than you think to get that done too. First pictures, then Photoshop, then create the listing. DONE, now relax, NO not yet. Wait, maybe it is...

Time to blog. OK so now you are up to speed with where I am in my day today. Blogging almost done. Not a chore though, this is fun. Would you like to see some pictures of the quilt? OK here goes.
I showed this before but these were cropped in Photoshop.


Here is a close up of the coins and that pinwheel? My friend, Yuki, carved a stone stamp form and this is how the stamp comes out. My name is in Japanese in the lower right corner of the stamp. I should have inked it a little more but oh well. I have decided to use this on the quilts I sell that have a light back. I bought some custom made tape for dark backgrounds. Keep reading to see it.


LTW's wonderful quilting. I love these birds and berries!



This is the tape I bought from Litta Lotta. I should have made the cat a little darker and will correct that for the next time. She does great work if you are in the market for labels for your quilts. I wanted something that said it came from me without a huge homemade label. It will be a loop sewn into the binding, like Red Pepper Quilts has done. What do you think?

Oh, I forgot to show you this. Yesterday after my hours of errands, I had to bring the church bulletin board home and update it. This is what I came up with. It needs some photos of the group and our antics but those are on my work computer so I will need to send some of them to the store for printing and then add them to the board. I think it came out quite well. I'm not nearly as good with paper. I had that quilted wrapping paper and that was all I had left of it so I thought it would be great on the board. I need to glue the edge down but I was pretty pleased with the outcome.


I have been working on my embroidery and doing some of the flower basket blocks I had begun. I will have to take some pictures later. At night the fam has been watching season one and two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I have been working on those then. Anyhoo. I guess that's enough for now, right?

Oh, one last thing. We have found out that our dumb dog LOVES to eat snow. Last night we took some video of her eating snow in a bowl we brought in the house. I am going to post that too. Make sure you get a chance to watch it. The second one finds Jack trying to hone in on the action only to be denyed. Funny stuff.

Ok, laundry is calling, then relaxing. Yep, I mean it, I'm really going to do it cuz work begins tomorrow.

Great way to begin the new year!

I had one more day off today before I had to go back to work. DD2 has a ganglion cyst and today was the day to go in and have the dr try to drain it. It was BIG, like the size of a ping pong ball! It was an interesting experience although I doubt if that will fix it. I think she will probably have to have surgery but since she has to write for college she will have to do it after graduation this spring. Well, enough with the gory details. (Unless you are really into gross, then go to You Tube and look for zit popping and you will see more than you ever wanted to, kind of like a train wreck!!)
Here is what it looked like at Thanksgiving. The doctor rated it a 7 out of 10 with 10 being the biggest! I think I would agree. Our turkey had a weird bump just like the cyst so we thought it would be funny to take a comparison shot. Weird sense of humor, that's me! BTW this is a 25 pound turkey, just for scale.



Well earlier today this was the scene I watched as I was on the computer.


Then after we got home from the dr and DD had to pack up her car and go back to school this is what we found on her stuff. Just making sure there was the proper amount of cat fun on each and every article of clothing before they go back to a catless home!

How incredibly considerate, don't you think??

Really, I just wanted some pics with my words and since I am still recovering from Christmas these will have to do. I do have the dragon lonestar back from LTW and it is gorgeous! Now I will hand it off to PTM for binding. Her binding is so amazing, better than my own!! Thanks gals!! I will show it to you once I can spread it out on the floor and get some good shots. I need to take some pics of the little red quilt too for ETSY. Just ran out of time. After the dr and chinese for lunch, we went to Sam's club and Gordon foods then back here and loaded her into the car, with her fish and her rats. I will miss those little guys! Then laundry and now time on the computer before the new Gossip Girl and Secret Life.

How are you spending your evening?

A New Year

It is officially 2010. I look forward to what January brings each new year. It is a time for us to take stock of our lives and see what we have done, successfully or otherwise and to make the course corrections each of us needs to make. I have been reading a lot of your blogs of late and there are lots of inspiration out there but we all have to do it in a manner consistent with who we are...am I right? If you are only interested in quilty things you may want to just skip this post because it is about me as a person.

I usually write a Christmas letter where I recap all the things the family has done and my part in this letter is usually confined to my quilting because that is such a big part of my life. I need to look at how big that is and if I am shortchanging the family. Well, here goes for what has happened this year and what I hope to have happen in the upcoming one.

I set out last year to learn EQ and to use my embroidery module, neither of which I accomplished, so they go on the list again for this year.

I managed to make quilts for some of my friends and for their babies, the latest one just recently arriving in France for our French daughter's new son.

That being said, I am now a "Nana" to said French daughter's new son, Andrew. What a blessing!

I have slowly been coming to terms with my middle DD getting ready to graduate from college and take that next BIG leap into becoming the amazing person she was born to be. Not easy!

I have cemented the friendship with my oldest DD. We work together now and that has made us closer. We are also venturing along the weight loss journey together (although she is kicking my butt so far) Good for her!

I have watched my DS continue to mature, slowly, oh so slowly but it is happening. It is difficult and painful to watch how slowly this is happening, but I am taking joy in that it is happening at all!

I celebrated 50 years of living which is a great thing.

I also celebrated 26 years of being married to my best friend, not too shabby.

I learned I can't do it all nor do I want/need to do that anymore.

I succeeded and failed at many things this year, now to sweep that away, wash the slate clean and move on to the new year. Here goes nothing.

What do I want to accomplish in this upcoming year?

1-Continue the weight loss journey with DD1 and exercise more.

2-Work on a more sustainable life style, including more natural foods, growing more of my own food and canning. We have begun this in 2009.

3-Use credit cards less (I have been pretty successful with this now I must help my family to do the same). Work on paying off some of that debt too. Kind of painful to talk about but I need this list.

4-Slow down and appreciate family time more.

5-Begin to clean out the "stuff" that is cluttering up my house and my life. I need to learn to get rid of things I don't use and don't need. Help my DH to do the same. Our basement and garage are in dire need of some rigorous clearing out!

6-I set up and ETSY shop, oh yes I did, and I would like to take some of the "vintage" items I have collected and sell them there along with some of the extra scrap quilts that I don't have homes for. So keep a look out for these. I just listed my first 3 vintage items!

7-I have loads of pattern ideas and some very supportive friends that offered to be pattern testers, so I would like to publish some of my patterns this year.

8-As I said earlier, I *need* to learn how to use my EQ program and also my embroidery module.

9-I have a pretty big stash, I have made an effort to use from it this year and will continue to do so in 2010.

10-I need to work on my UFO's (as do most people) so I will continue to have a list on my sidebar for this. Having the list helps me to focus and work my way through to get them finished.

Mostly, I want to make this year a year of growth as a person and to become a better wife, mother and friend. Organize more and spend less. Laugh more and relax more. To that end I would like to do a little more traveling with my DH and my friends too.

I wish for you all that you have what you need to lead a happy and productive life. To be able to do the things you love to do and to be true to yourselves.

I appreciate each and every one of you. I am overwhelmed by your kindness and your support. I hope each of you knows how very much I think of you and that I want only good things for you all in this new year. God bless and keep you all safe in 2010!
XOXOXO
Pam

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone! I snapped these photos at midnight at my house! We really know how to have some exciting times around here, lol. Laxy and Jack were making nice on the couch and DH and I were watching the ball drop. I hope the new year is as quiet around here as all that.



I forgot to tell you that the copy of Material Obsession 2 that I ordered came in. If you have not seen this book you really need to get your hands on a copy and check it out. There are a couple of quilts in here that I am just dying to try. Really, run right out and get yourself a copy, the book is fabulous!

Awhile ago this pattern was in a magazine and I fell in love with it. I have been looking for the fabrics for awhile and when I was in my LQS (Threads and Treasures) the owner, Kay, told me to choose 3 fabrics from the line and she would order those into her shop. I chose 3 including the stripe and she called me yesterday to tell me that they were in. So I bought some of each of the 3 along with some others to go with those and will supplement from my stash.

As for the whole New Year Resolution thing. I really need to think about this and I will post later today. Have a wonderful new year!

My Neighborhood BOM

Just a quick note to let you all know that I have posted the last 2 blocks in the My Neighborhood BOM. I am going to be writing the directions for the quilt soon and will post those hopefully in the near future! I am planning on leaving them up on my website as free patterns though the end of February so if you need any and haven't downloaded them yet, "What are you waiting for??"

After that I am going to put them as a set in my ETSY shop. Yes, I broke down and made a shop. I have a quilt to photograph and list which I will be doing soon too, I hope!

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed the Houses and will share what you have made with me so I can see your interpretation of them!