Pillowcases Quick & Easy

I spent a little time in my sewing room today! YEA!!  I had made a quilt for a baby shower but wanted to be able to deliver it in a pillowcase so today was the day to get the pillowcase done.  I love making these, they are so quick and easy!  Here’s what you need to make a single pillowcase:

Pillowcase Fabric Requirements

(Makes 1 pillowcase)

1/8 yard for piping

1/3 yard for band

7/8 yard for pillowcase body

Cutting Requirements

1 – 2” x 41” (I used a 2 ½” by width of fabric)

1 – 11” x 41” (I cut mine by WOF and then just cut off the excess)

1 – 26” x 41” (WOF)

Or you can go to AllPeopleQuilt.com and visit the 1 Million Pillowcase Challenge.  They’ve got a bunch of free patterns on there to make a pillowcase, I used pattern #15.  I also did not follow their sewing instructions.  Here’s how I made them:

Cut your pieces of fabric to the correct size.  I left all of my pieces the width of the fabric and just cut the length down to the size I needed.  I also had some 2 ½” strips left from the quilt so instead of cutting that strip down or cutting a new one I used the 2 ½” strip.  You can use all the same fabrics or you can switch them up, the choice is yours!

Once you’ve got all three pieces of your fabric cut take the 2 ½” strip and fold it in half wrong side together and press it. 

Next take your piece of fabric that is 11” x WOF and lay that face up on your table.

Next take your piece of fabric that is 26” x WOF and lay that face up on top of the 11” piece lining up the raw edges.

Your final piece of fabric to place on top is your 2 ½” strip that has been folded in half (remember wrong sides together just like you are making binding) and place that on top of all the pieces.   You may want to put some pins in to hold all of these pieces together.

Pick up the bottom of your 26” piece of fabric and roll it into itself.  Keep rolling it until you get almost all the way to the piping strip.  Once you’ve rolled the 26” piece you can easily see your band piece of fabric.  

Pick up the raw edge (at the bottom) and fold it up to meet the top of your piping strip and pin.

Now take it to the sewing machine and sew a ¼” seam.  So easy!

You’ve now got a tube that looks like this!

Reach into the sewn tube and start pulling the fabric out, you’ve got a piece of fabric that has an attached band and piping but NO raw seams!!!

Time to press!  This may be a step that you just don’t think is important but if you don’t press you run the risk of your seams not matching or of your fabric having a twist in it so take just a few minutes and press.

Next step (and one I always have to double check myself on) fold your pillowcase in half, WRONG sides together.  Yes, wrong, not right sides together. If you haven’t trimmed your selvage now’s the time to do it, just double check and make certain that you haven’t left a selvage before your proceed.  Pin and sew down one side and across the bottom with a ¼” seam.

Turn pillowcase wrong sides out, press and now sew ½” seam down one side and across the bottom!

Turn pillowcase right side out and press one last time and it’s done!

Fast and easy for sure!  Next time you purchase fabric, a jelly roll or a layer cake for a quilt don’t forget to grab a little extra fabric to make a pillowcase!

Happy Quilting!

Embroidery Classes

Did you know that I teach an Embroidery Classes the 3rd Wednesday of every month?  I do and I love it!  Embroidery was something I learned as a pre-teen.  My sisters and I were taught by our next door neighbor, Mrs. Langworthy.  I remember a group of the neighbor girls getting together at her house and her teaching us.  We were taught the basics and to this day I can't believe how lucky we were to have someone will to spend an evening every week with a group of pre-teen girls and teach us all how to stitch.

I have 2 classes, the first one is from 1:00-4:00 PM and in this class we are working on the Home Sweet Home An Embroidered Workbox by Carolyn Pearce.

Isn't it just darling?  Wait until you get a look at the next picture!

Each piece is tiny and because they re all so small they are really 'doable' in a short amount of time.  Some of the stitches are ones we've already learned but some of them are completely new and we are having a lot of fun learning them.

This is a picture of the back of the box!  The box is 6 5/16" x 6 1/8" x 3 7/8" finished!

Our evening class goes from 6:00-9:00 PM and in this class we are doing something completely different!  We are doing the same stitches (for the most part) as we are in the afternoon class but instead of putting them on the notions for the box we have taken Crabapple Hill Studio's pattern 

Susan's Dresden Garden

and we are doing each of the embroidered 'blades' with the stitches we are learning!  Talk about fun!  The threads we are using for this are Silks, Embroidery Floss, Pearl Cotton & Wool!  

Here we are learning how to color on fabric with Crayola Crayons and to Embroider!

Aren't they just so cute!!  Follow my Blog and sign up for my newsletter at Miss Marker's Quilts and receive this FREE pattern from Crabapple Hill Designs!!

Join me on the 3rd Wednesday of the month for Embroidery Class!

Happy Quilting!

Quilter's Take Manhattan!

Quilter’s Take Manhattan!

I was actually thinking they should have changed the name of the show from Quilter’s Take Manhattan to O’Susannah’s Takes Manhattan!  See all those people?  Well more than half of them were all from O’Susannah’s!  Sue took 2 buses loaded with Quilters to Manhattan and it was a blast! 

Now for the real eye candy!  The quilts!

Every type of quilt was there.  There were real modern quilts, landscape quilts and antique quilts.  Mark Dunn (Owner of Moda Fabrics) brought some quilts from his personal collection to share with us. 

And a very special quilt from his personal collection, the first quilt his son made for him!

A Jelly Roll Quilt!

Did you know that every year Moda features a reproduction quilt?  It’s called Quilts for a Cause.  Mr. Dunn brought quite a few of them, both the Antique Quilt and Moda’s modern day version of the quilt.   

Have  you seen the 2014 quilt yet?

Give us a call or send us an email, we've got the kits!  Kits normally cost $160.00, for a limited time our price is $140.00 (While supplies last)!  This quilt is honoring Libby Lehman.  

  

Here you can see The Antique quilt behind Mark’s son and he is holding Moda’s version of the quilt. 

Now you can see both a Antique and the reproduction next to each other.  The matching of the colors is amazing!

The following quilt (the Woman’s face) from a distance is pretty, very pretty but when you got up close to it an realized what it was, well it was simply stunning and truly pulled at your heart strings.

It was made up of thousands of pictures of women that had had Cancer.

           

And it was beautiful!

We had a wonderful time and EVERYONE was exhausted when it was time to go home!

If you plan to be in or around NYC September 2015, you should go!  Quilter’s Take Manhattan is put on by the Quilt Alliance (Alliance for American Quilts).  Here is a link Quilt Alliance page where you can get more information and sign up to the eNews. 

Happy Quilting Everyone!

NYC Buildings - Quilter's Eye Candy

NYC and FIT!a

Last September I was lucky enough to join a group of ladies for a bus trip to NYC!!  Whenever I tell anyone I’m from NY they always think I’m from ‘the’ city but I actually live about 5 house north west of NYC and haven’t been there in YEARS!   Anyhow, there was a group of women going from O’Susannah’s Quilts & Gifts in Watkins Glen NY and considering my sister is O’Susannah herself and my sister Jane and my sister-in-law Jeannie were also going I just HAD to go with them!  I had a ball!  

The entire reason for going was to attend Quilter’s Take Manhattan 2014.  It was a wonderful show, so wonderful that this post is going to be in two sections!  The first is going to be some eye candy of the building in NYC, talk about a quilter’s paradise!  I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to walk around the city and look at the buildings!

First up is a picture of Madison Square Garden.  Many of you may think that this is just a plain simple building but to me it was some real modern quilting, straight lines, blocks of all sizes, even the steps to me had a cool pattern!

When looking at this building I saw fabulous triangle fills!  The ore I looked at it I realized that the side ‘fern’ type design would work perfectly in a Dear Jane Quilt Border!

 

Take a look at that circular sashing fill!  I think it would be perfect; there is nothing directional about it so it would fill up the sashings perfectly.  Also did you notice something about the circles?  Yup, beautiful piano keys with an echo inside them.

Here are more piano keys for you along with a gorgeous wave!  I will be keeping this design in mind for the upcoming 2015 Row-by-Row quilt theme is water.  This pattern is also a great pattern for beginner free motion quilting.

Do you need an idea for a corner stone fill?  Love it!  I also really like the straight lines next to it.  They gave me ideas of echoing blocks especially the more modern quilt blocks.

This photo is filled with quilting ideas!  Start off with the first rope border, then the beads, then beautiful echo lines and finish it off with that wonderful fern with a flower in the center (upper right corner of the picture).  Do you see why I spent my entire walk looking up?  I wanted my machine to play!

Window headers make great circular designs!  Love the petals!  They would also be perfect for a Dresden Plate Quilt!

I really liked the very clean lines of this one, again a perfect quilting motif for sashings, add the echo of the sashing with the circles as a fill and you’ve got a great design!

I really didn’t think I’d see prairie points in NYC but I did!    The grapes and vines would be perfect on a quilt come this fall when the grapes are in season again.  Lots and lots of detail on this one!

Perfect edge-to-edge design!

A great block fill or a corner stone or an all over design!  I can see one row orientated this was and then the next row flipped, it would give multiple different designs and would also be beyond gorgeous on a whole cloth quilt!!! 

All of the shops windows were beautiful!  The wedding gowns were beyond beautiful!  I thought I should snap at least one photo of a store window just so you knew once in a while I stopped looking up! 

Happy Quilting!