12 Days of Christmas in July - Tutorial and Giveaway

 

Welcome to the first day of the 12 Days of Christmas in July blog hop!  I am excited to share my pillow sham tutorial with you and hope you will also visit Carole at From My Carolina Home and Sharon at Vroomans Quilts to see what they have made.  You can see the full line up of blogs here.  If you leave us all comments on our featured days you will be entered to win a prize and there will be prizes for each day of the hop!  Be sure to also swing by and thank Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for putting all this together.

 

Pillow shams are a great way to use up scraps and practice free-motion quilting (FMQ). I made my pillow sham to fit a 16 inch pillow form, wanting something larger to cuddle with during the winter. Winter seems very far away at the moment with this 100° weather!

I used 1.5-inch strips of Christmas fabric to create strippy half-square triangle blocks that finished at 4 inches, then arranged them in a pinwheel pattern according to my husband's input (he said it made him happy, which is important of course).

 

I then basically made a table runner that measured 16.5 inches by 35.5 inches unfinished.  You can see I added a 3.5 inch strip to one end of my top, this was to make it long enough to overlap in the back.

 

 Here is a good shot of my FMQ.  I was able to do a continuous line pattern so I only had to bury a couple threads, a very nice time saver!

After your top is quilted, trim the batting leaving a quarter inch of batting around the edges.  Then bind the short ends.

 

Place the quilted piece right side up on the table. Fold the end that you want to see when the sham is turned right side out approximately 8 inches towards the center.  With the pattern I used I folded it two blocks width.

 

Then fold the other side in so that there is about a 3-inch overlap.  Again, with the pattern I used I folded two blocks width plus the strip.

 

 Here is a close-up of the overlap.

 

I have found I like to clip my edges together using Wonder Clips for the next sewing step because it's pretty thick with four layers of fabric and two layers of batting, and even more so where the flaps overlap.  Using a walking foot, sew a straight seam about half an inch from the edge (I used the edge of my walking foot as measurement).  Take your time as you go over the bound ends so you don't break a needle.  I also suggest backstitching a couple times where the bound ends are to strengthen where the sham will experience the most stress when putting the pillow form in.

 

Next, trim the corners down so that they will be less bulky when turned inside out.  Then sew a wide zigzag along the edge to clean it up and keep the fabric from fraying.

 

 Here is a close-up of my stitching.  The long straight stitch right next to the zigzag is my basting stitch, not the stitch to enclose the pillow sham.

 

 All that is left is to turn the pillow sham inside out!

 

 View from the back.

 

View from the front.

 

I hope you will try making a pillow sham using this method.  Send me a photo if you do!  My email is brandizzle7133 at gmail dot com.

 

Remember to leave a comment on our blogs as you visit to be entered in the giveaways.  There are twelve(!) prizes to be won!

If you need comment inspiration, how about telling me your favorite small, homemade Christmas gift to give or receive, I'm always looking for more ideas!

 

Merry Christmas in July!

~Brandy

 

 

And in case anyone was wondering where the quilt inspectors were during this process, well you can find them near a window, soaking up as much sunshine as possible!

 

 

Linking up to Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts



T'was the Night - Day Three

Oh happy day!  It's my turn on this wonderful blog hop, and I couldn't have been much more excited about participating in this one.  Not only do I love making small and quick projects, but I got to give one of them to a fellow quilter/blogger!  I just love giving homemade gifts.  Thank you very much to Marlene and Madame Samm for organizing this hop, I'm having such a wonderful time.  And thank you so much to all the others participating in the hop, I am loving seeing all the great ideas everyone has!  Be sure to hop over to my fellow ladies of the day, you can find the links at the end of this post.

 

First off, I wish to share with you what I received from Jill at Apple Avenue Quilts.  I was so excited to see what she made for me!

 

What a beautiful wrapping idea!  (sorry, I'm new to the idea of the use of ribbon.  So every time I see something wrapped in it I get all excited :)  )

I admire people with knitting skills, this is a beautiful washcloth Jill.

Buttons, yay!

And a couple great potholders, and perfect timing, I just had to retire a bunch because they were beyond saving.  I think you can't have enough of these, especially if you entertain ever.

Remember to go to Moose Stash Quilting next to see what I made for Joan!

 

And here are some ideas I found only took me a couple hours to make:

The Mortimer moose wall-hanging I made last year, you get the idea, small (it's only 17"x17"), simple patchwork, and simple applique.  Ta-da!  Stinkin' cute wall-hanging.  Then a patchwork pillow sham, a potholder using fancy fabric and flower shaped quilting, and some decorative stockings.

My great-grandma Pawlik inspired me when making these.  She made a bunch for the ladies in our family about 15 years ago, and we still all put them up for Christmas.  I'm hoping that will happen with my family when I'm a grandma someday!

Here are some more everyday-type gift ideas:

 



A project bag.  I love the size tremendously and got the instructions from Jina.  Not only will it hold all your sewing items you'd need, it is also the perfect size for a cosmetic bag, or to hold snacks on a car trip, or colored pencils and a small drawing pad... so many options!

A plastic bag holder.  My grandma Kathy showed me how to make these on Sunday, thank you grandma!  This one has already been claimed by my sister, which fits, she has a rooster-theme going on in her kitchen. 

And a lap quilt.  So this is the same idea as the self-binding baby blanket from Missouri Star Quilt Co, I just made it as large as I could while maintaining the 10" difference between the small and large piece of fabric.  I also managed to get a layer of batting in there, it took some finagling...

John agreed to model my lap quilt for me, wasn't that nice?

 

While I'm happy with the gifts I created, I believe my favorite last minute gift is the sweetest, and that is homemade candy!  Here's my dad's favorite recipe:

 

 

Chocolate Peanut-Butter Balls

1 C peanut-butter

1 C powdered sugar

1 package chocolate chips

 

Melt chocolate chips using whatever method you prefer.  Double boiler seems to be the most popular.

Prepare a jellyroll pan by laying out a piece of wax paper on it.

Mix PB and sugar together, roll into 1 inch wide balls, and dip into melted chocolate.  Place on jellyroll pan, and when the pan is filled place PB balls into fridge to set.

That's all there is to it!  You could then make a fabric box like Connie talks about in this post, line it with parchment or wax paper and fill it with these yummies for a quick treat too.

 

Here are the other ladies who are showing their gift ideas today:

 

Daisy Days

Just Keep Swimming

Words and Stitches

Apple Avenue Quilts

Pampered Pettit - that's me!

Moose Stash Quilting

 

Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season! 

~Brandy



with love to Konnie the cat, we'll miss you this Christmas my furry little sister

Christmas in July finish! (photo heavy)



Well, I'm pretty happy with myself, I just completed a project that satisfied my yearning for Christmas fabric, that need to make a Christmas something, and allowed me to practice my quilting.  I found a blog that hosted a Christmas in July hop which focused on small projects that can easily be finished before Christmas.  And on top of that they're offering a giveaway for making one of the projects!  I was immediately drawn to the first project they showed, which is a wreath wall hanging and also their button for the hop:

 

 

 

After I read thru the instructions a couple times I convinced myself I needed to use the Solstice mini charm pack, so I went to Stash and bought one.  And what were the odds, they were having a sale!  If I was really wise, I'd have bought two... oh well!  The tutorial mentions using some extra fabric for the grey and red borders, and I thought oh I should be fine, I have red and grey in my stash.  As you will see, they were not the right colors, so I improvised!  Also, as I was assembling the top I came to the conclusion that since I already have a Christmas wall hanging, that this would make a fabulous pillow sham.  So that's what I did, and here's how mine was done differently than their tutorial:

 

Making my wreath have a rounded look, I chose to not take one of the greens to sacrifice for use on the inside corners, instead I figured I could use the little triangles from these outside corners

And I did!  Wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I made it happen.





The center created!



Had to do the magic twist of course :)  By the way, if I ever make this again, I will press the seams all towards the green (or possibly open) for stitching-in-the-ditch purposes.

Here I was figuring out how I wanted to balance my reds and greys.  The off-white has a gold sparkle on it that is really subtle but ended up matching what I chose for the backing really well.

And here it is assembled.  At the time of adding the off-white border I decided to square it up, which unfortunately brought the dimensions down to 1 3/4" instead of 2", which normally wouldn't be a problem, except that the outside border is a bunch of mini charms... so I had to fudge a little here and there.  My husband pointed out that unless you're looking for it, people probably won't notice.

To make the bow I cut out the only fusible interfacing I had and auditioned the size and placement.

Then fused it to the back of the red.

And sewed it on.  And took it off.  4 times.  Turns out I didn't know what I was doing in this case, and after a lot of trial and error that included trying to hand embroider these pieces on I figured out I needed to add some of the interfacing to the back of the top.  What was happening was the fabric was bunching up like crazy as I tried to go around the bottom of the ribbon pieces and was causing really bad puckering.

But this helped a lot!  Again, if I do this project again, I will use my normal method of applique and do the whole turn inside-out after sewing the interfacing to the fabric then iron it to the top, and sew around the edge with a straight stitch.  Lesson learned!

Top complete and ready to baste and quilt.

I follow Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt for my free motion quilting practice, which is what is up on my computer in the background.  My Bernina and I are working on becoming friends again.  Mostly I find she likes Aurifil thread as long as it's in the bobbin as well as is the top thread, I never had any problems with breakage in this whole project.  Probably helps that I also had the tension under control.

A snowflake centerpiece.  I found while doing this that I really need the lines to follow or I end up all over the place, my hands have a greater tendency to lose control of the fabric and my stitches get all out of control.  It seems so weird, but then I remind myself, that's why they make stencils!

 

Here's how the quilting started out, I was so happy how well it made the wreath puff out!  It helped too that I used 1/2" batting.  I have heard people say that they think stippling is so overused, but I must tell you how super proud I am of myself for doing this stipple, as I said above I am not so good at not following lines, and this was all done without them!  And John was super impressed with me as well, which is always nice.

And from the front.

Quilting complete!

I made this as big as I could so you can see the quilting.  I used Lori's tutorial on for the holly leaves, and made up the corners which is snowflake inspired (John's idea).  I also went back and outlined the inside of the wreath as well as the outside of the off-white border.  It often amazes me how big a difference such a simple outline can make.

And complete!  All I did was add the backing pieces to make a pillow sham, although I did have to piece together my backing pieces to make it work.

The inside seam brought the sham down to about 14.5" x 14.5", so fit my 14" pillow form just right!

 

The only thing I'm contemplating is adding a couple snap buttons to the back to help hold the overlap in place, as I discovered that 2 inches of overlap is NOT enough, you definitely want at least 5 inches.  At least, if you ever plan on anyone seeing the back.  Or if you want the pillow to stay inside the sham.  :)

So I hope you're inspired to get ahead on your Christmas projects as well, I am off to work on that wedding quilt for the wedding that happened over a month ago now... no more procrastinating for the rest of the year!  AHAHAHAHAHA, right.

 

Have a great day!

~Brandy