Striped Name Pillows

When I was designing Lucky's Under the Sea Nursery, I made him some fish throw pillows.  I had so much fabric left over after making Rowdy's Quilt that I wanted to make him a pillow, too.  As I was cutting for the quilt I had this vision of making a striped front with his name appliqued on the front.  (At one point I considered appliqueing Rowdy's name on the back of his quilt but decided that I didn't want to hide that on the back of a quilt and it deserved to be its own project.)  The decorative pillow will live on the full bed in Rowdy's room, when it isn't being used in pillow forts, that is.

I also have fabric left over from Lucky's nursery, plus some other fabric that belongs under the sea.  Why not make Lucky a pillow with his name on it, too?  

The pillow forms I plan to use are 16"x26".  I cut out 11 strips each 3" wide and at least 17" long.  The width will be greater than 26" and the edge pieces might not be quite as wide as the rest but I wanted this to be a fast project.  I plan to use the same chevron fabric for an overlapped back that I used for Rowdy's quilt.  

It took longer to lay out the 11 strips than it did to sew them. Well, this isn't exactly true but it feels like it. I really wanted to take the time to balance out the colors.  I sewed them together with 1/4" seams and then pressed them open.  

In my first applique letter project I drew backwards bubble letters freehand.  I want to make something a little more advanced for these pillows so I decided to print out the letters I wanted to use.  Looking at the front fabric draped on the pillow, I decided to try to make the letters 6" tall.  This should be big enough for the name to be prominent without disappearing over the curvature of the pillow.

I wanted to aim for 6" tall letters, but the font that I selected would have ended up a bit too wide to be easily read on the pillow.  I reduced the font "Hobo Std" from 450 to 400 and printed out the letters again.  Next, I traced the backwards letters onto the appropriate side of my EZL12 Pellon Lite EZ-Steam II fusible webbing.

My first applique project was with quilting cotton on canvas.  I haven't appliqued with quilting cotton on to quilting cotton so I wanted to practice before doing it on the pillows.  In order to test the applique, I made a test strip by sewing two pieces of 3" fabric together and remnant applique pieces from cutting out letters.  (The blue is to test applique border colors for another project that is coming up on the blog.)

For the satin stitch in navy thread, I settled on the zigzag (stitch 8 on my machine) with width 2 and distance 0.3.

I cut the striped pieces down to be 28" x 17.5".  I plan to do half inch seams all around and didn't think it was worth trimming 0.25" from either end of the pillow so on the edges I'll use a 0.75" seam.  I tried to place the letters roughly centered using the stripes as a bit of a guide.  I am lucky that both boys have names with 5 letters so there is a nice balance between the two pillows.

Appliqueing went much better than I thought.  I was nervous that I would have some problems with the machine but everything went really smoothly.

I wanted the front of the pillows to have some more structure but I didn't want to take the time to quilt these lovely fronts I created.  I trimmed the threads and then  used iron on fleece (TP971F - Fusible Thermolam Plus) to stabilize the front of the pillows.

For each pillow back, I cut two pieces that would overlap to close the pillow.  The large piece measured 17.5" x 20.5" and the small piece 17.5" x 14.5".  I hemmed the edges of the back by pressing 1/4" and then 1/2", finishing with a straight stitch.

Oh man, i just realized that I was using a brown bobbin when I was hemming the back of the pillow edges.  Thankfully it is still a dark color and you can't really tell.  I don't want to rip it out and start over now that I've finished 3/4 of the hems!

I assembled the pillows as follows:  Name applique right side up, large piece right side down, small piece right side down.  I stitched 1/2" around all of the edges, clipped the corners and turned right side out.

Finally these pillow cases are complete!  I don't think they quite match what I had in my head back when I was cutting for my first ever quilt, but I am nevertheless happy with them.  I still have a TON of extra fabrics from these projects, I wonder what else I should make out of them!

A final press and the pillows were ready to move into their respective rooms.

Lucky was especially excited to have his own name pillow.  He LOVES letters and can read and spell the names of our family.  (Whenever we see a popular truck brand with Rowdy's name on it Lucky is very excited to tell us about it.)  

Lucky really wanted his "very special pillow" to go in his crib every night but we decided that it would be best on his chair for bedtime snuggles instead.  This way he can see the pillow from his crib, or at least that is the logic we used with an almost 3 year old!  

The boys were so cute that I couldn't leave you with just one picture of them playing with their pillows.  I think I now have an applique bug.  What else can I personalize for the boys?

7/11/16 - 7/12 cut the top fabric.  7/23/16 stitched the top strips together.  
8/24/16 finished assembly.  

My First Quilt Part 3 - Quilting, Binding and Finishing

Welcome to part 3 of the diary of my first quilt!  This is the third and final post of the series, where I will finally do the quilting and binding of Rowdy's baby quilt.  I am really happy where things are but I was really nervous to put stitches into the top that required so much planning.  I did some practice quilting after I finished stitching together the top and back of the quilt.  The first post of this diary detailed the cutting and planning of the quilt.

The finished quilt!

6/24/16

I finished the back of this quilt ages ago, but have held off on the quilting for many reasons. First, I decided I wanted to get some curved safety pins to make my quilt sandwich. These pins arrived in two days, what could the problem be? Well I'm scared. I'm scared to pin and quilt this baby quilt. However, now that we are in the end of June I really need to get started. I want to finish the quilt by the time Rowdy is 6 months old so I can take his POTD (picture of the day) on the top of the quilt.

This is my plan for quilting: First stitch in the ditch along each border piece. I will not stitch around each square individually but rather stitch down the entire length of the border pieces. Yes this will end up with tiny squares at the intersections, but I'm fine with that. Once that is done I can evaluate what I should do in the center piece.

I used the following layering and basting a quilt tutorial to set up my quilt sandwich.  I used frog tape to place the quilt back on the floor stretched as tightly as I could.  Another type of tape might have stuck to the fabric better, but it actually seemed to work pretty well in the end.  Plus this tape won't damage my floors!  (We put in the hardwood floors when we moved into the house about a year ago.)

I'm using 100% cotton batting  Like the tutorial said, the batting is sticking to the cotton. I carefully smoothed it out over the back, trying to. It stretch it out.

I took care to align the quilt top with the stripe on the back. As aligned, the tulip of the stripe lines up with the same point of the quilt top on both sides. Wahoo! I took extra care to smooth it out, crossing my fingers the bottom didn't shift while kneeling gently on my quilt.  This is when Rowdy woke from his nap and I needed to wait until the next nap to start pinning.

I started pinning in the center and then moved my way out to each side. Starting back at the center I pinned out in each quadrant all the way to the edge

 

Then I went back and added pins until I could touch at least 2 pins wherever I put my hand.

Next came the moment of truth... unwrapping the quilt to see if all pins really went through all layers. They did! They really did! (Not pictured) Now I can see a few places that could use more pins. Oh man, nothing stands between me and quilting now.

6/25/2016

After testing the walking foot, I expanded my sewing table to give myself some more room to work with.  I have the Bjursta table from Ikea which doubles in width.  Normally I keep it collapsed but I knew that when quilting a whole quilt I would want more space for the fabric to rest.

It is the moment of truth. Using navy thread (weight 30) on the top and bottom I started by sewing around the center dinosaurs.

I'm unsure of the order to go... I want to minimize places with double stitching and minimize ends to snip.
I knew I wanted to stitch in the ditch all the way around, but what order should I do that in? I decided to start with concentric squares and that I could fill in the lines that radiate out after.  I back stitched wherever I started and stopped so the quilting won't unravel.

6/27/2016
Today I finished stitching in the ditch around the navy stripes.  You can't really see it.

Can you see the quiliting?

I didn't even use up 2 bobbins. Figured since there wasn't that more stitching here than there was to piece the quilt.

I'm not going to quilt I. The individual blocks. Maybe once I get more advanced, but this batting only needed stitching to be up to 8" apart. 4.5" squares will be fine. I do need to do something for the center though.

The only place the quilting is really obvious is through the squares on the back of the quilt.  For the center and border, navy won't work. This shows up waaaay too much. I want something more subtle.

I made another quilting sampler to test out thread colors.

The white isn't so bad on the light blue, white, grey or yellow. It isn't so great on the Navy, though. But the Navy thread is only good on the Navy, so I'll stick with the white on too and try a navy bobbin on the bottom.

When I started quilting the center, I noticed that the bobbin threads were showing through a little.  I reduced the tension from 3 to 2 and that helped a bit.

With my machine it was a little annoying to turn the work for these concentric squares I was quilting, but doable.  I can see why you want as much workspace between the needle and the machine for quilting.  I can't imagine working on a bigger quilt!

I was able to hit almost the exact center from square spiral.  I'm really pleased that I was able to keep my spacing relatively even.

6/28/2016

For the edge I wanted to do a squared back and forth zig zag like I tried on the sampler of dinosaur fabrics above. 

I tried to keep my spacing even, I even tried to count the number of stitches on each of the short sections. I would need to fudge it a bit between the corners and I wasn't as consistent as I would have liked.  Hopefully none of this will be hidden under the binding and it will seem relatively centered.  

7/1/2016
I finished quilting the edge today!

Quilting done.

7/6/2016
The quilt is almost done, I just need to trim off the excess fabric and then bind the edge!

Back when I was planning out this quilt, I purchased some extra polkadot fabric to use for the binding.  However, when I cut the polkadot binding strips and laid it out over the quilt, I was not a huge fan.  

The polka dots are all wrong for the binding.  The quilt is begging for a navy binding to go with the center main panel.

I cut some 3" strips and stitched them together on the bias.  Then I pressed them in half and got ready to attach it to my quilt.

I debated between doing hand binding and machine binding but ultimately wanted to use my machine for both binding steps.  I dislike hand stitching with a passion.  Using my 1/4" seam foot, I machine stitched the binding to the front of my quilt.  I feel like the binding is going to be a bit too wide.  Maybe I should have cut 2.5 inch strips rather than 3 inch. There is too much fabric on the wrong side for a neat stitch in the ditch. There will be too much fabric left.

7/7/2016

A handmade quilt I was given and has machine binding. She attached the binding to the wrong side of the quilt and then stitched the overlap evenly around. This might have been smarter. Oh well.

Binding added to the front

Since the binding was wider than I really wanted, I folded the binding wider than the edge but this didn't work at the corners where it is a bit thinner than everywhere else. I did hand tack down the wrong side of the corners so there would be less floppiness.

I can't believe I almost used the polkadot fabric to finish this quilt  The stained glass feeling of the quilt needed a contrasting boarder on the final edge!

Today, 7/7/16, I finished the binding and pressed the quilt.  Voilà it is done!  Exactly one week before Rowdy turns 6 months old.

I cannot express how proud I am do be done with this quilt.  This doesn't quite fit the vision I had in my head, but I put this together from scratch all by myself!

What part of the vision did I miss?  I don't think I envisioned picking out such bold and vibrant colors, but this is where the fabrics took me.  There is also a lot of high contrast.  These colors aren't what I might have picked, but I loved the evolution of finding the first panels of the dinosaur fabric and then searching for complementary geometric patterns that would go with the quilt.  I don't feel like there is anything missing and I LOVE how it turned out. 

7/14/2016

Today Rowdy is 6 months old!  

I didn't finish the quilt for his birth, but I did finish it to be the half way point on his Picture of the Day baby book.  I am proud that I successfully have taken pictures of my second child every day of his life  Hopefully I can keep this up to a year so he can have a POtD project like Lucky.  

Look at that face!  My little guy is so happy!  

Thank you for hanging in on this long series of posts.  I know that I have more quilts in me but I have a feeling that next time I won't take quite so many pictures and notes.  I am so glad that my second baby will have one of my firsts!  I'm glad to have created something that is only for him.  Now... what am I going to quilt next?  It is time to start planning out my second quilt!