That Special Friend Pillow {Tutorial}

So, I ran into a little problem. It turns out that, when making a tutorial, I'm not so great at remembering to take pictures! I guess this is really more like a cross between a process and a tutorial. Hopefully it's somewhat helpful.

If you can remember very far back, this pillow is named for that special friend who is so proud to show off anything that you make her/him. She's worth the extra time and effort (or maybe that person is you!).

Name: *That* Special Friend Pillow
Finished Size: 20"
Credit: Japanese Magazine (I'm assuming Cotton Time or Quilts Japan) A sketch I made after seeing a pillow in Quilts Japan September 2010 (Thanks Doe!)
Sewing Style: Foundation Paper Pieced
Labour Level - Best Friend Status
Skill Level - the tutorial assumes you already know quilting basics, problem solving, and how to use a foundation pattern. If you haven't used a foundation pattern, this tutorial is a good start.

Supplies:
Courthouse steps template - 9 copies  (there's a daily download limit. If you can't download, try the next day or email me (see profile) and I'll send it to you.)
20" pillow form
thread
22" square batting


Fabric:
Nine 1" squares

Dark Fabrics: 8 prints each at least 1" x WOF
Medium Fabrics: 8 prints each at least 1" x WOF
Light Fabrics: 1-20 prints each at least 1" x WOF

Inside border (solid): two strips 16.5"x1", two strips 17.5"x1"
Outside border (solid or print): two strips 18"x2", two strips 20"x2"

Backing: Depends on the back you choose.  I used made an envelope back and used one piece 20"x15" and one piece 20"x10".


Step 1: Choose Fabrics

You will need four fabrics per block.  The general idea is to have a light background, dark "star points," and medium corners. I'm not the best with values so my dark and medium run a rather blurry line. 

The very astute will notice that I didn't use many of the fabrics in my picture. Once I got going, I realized that some just weren't working for me. Pretty common among, quilters, I think!

If you don't like to use foundation piecing, then head over to Kerry's blog and use her method. She is also in the midst of a (awesome) courthouse steps pillow tutorial and is not using foundation paper.

Once you have an idea of the fabrics that you want to use, you can either cut all your strips up front or cut as you go. I cut all my strips up front but didn't use a lot of them. No biggie - they are perfect for string quilts.

Here are my strips after they were cut.

Step 2: Construction

Hopefully you downloaded the template that I made.  And hopefully it works for you. This is my first time drawing a foundation pattern template. Even though it's just a log cabin, it was still sort of hard for me. Let me know if you find mistakes. I tend to fix mistakes as I go then forget to record them for future use.

The first thing you'll need to do is decide where your fabrics are going to go. I marked the location of the light, medium and dark fabrics in the following grid. 

In my pillow, I used one print per section but you could certainly make it more scrappy by mixing up your lights, mediums or darks. But make sure to keep lights with lights and darks with darks, etc.
Group your fabrics into sets according to which are going to go in each block. Then start with whatever block you want. I sewed all the outer blocks first and the center block last. But it really doesn't matter. I also chose my combinations as I went.

If you are using regular printer paper, make sure to set your stitch length to something very small. I go down to at least 1.8. This makes it much easier to rip the paper off without pulling out stitches.

This is the first place that I forgot to take pictures. But, since each strip is numbered, it should be fairly straight forward. I Googled log cabin paper piecing and found this tutorial, that looks pretty good. If you don't understand how to paper piece this block, follow that tutorial using my template.

Place your 1" square, right side up, over position "1" on the back side of the template.  Then, allowing for 1/4" seams, place your medium print right sides together with the square and sew along position 2. Trim and press the position 2 strip. Your light print goes over position 3, then a medium over position 4, and so on. follow the order, paying attention to the light and medium and the block should turn out fine. I use an "add a quarter ruler" to trim every seam allowance and also press each seam. I would make a comment about being type A but I'm really not. I just like flat blocks ;)

Once all your blocks are sewn, remove the paper

You will be left with these:

Lay your blocks according to the chart then sew them together in rows.

Pressing the seams open, as you go

Now choose your 1/2" inner border. Here are some of the colours that I tried before settling on the turquoise Moda Crossweave. 

The inner border uses the 1" wide strips for a finished size of .5".  If you want to make a larger pillow, this would be a good spot to increase the size. Plus, a larger pillow would allow more of the borders to be viewed, which I think would look very nice.


Sew the shortest border strips to two opposite sides. Press the seams toward the border then sew the other two strips and press towards to the border.


Next, choose the outer border. I spent a lot of unnecessary time choosing this fabric! You can barely see the border in the finished pillow! If you are going to make a larger pillow, by increasing the border width, then you should probably spend time choosing the fabric. If not, just choose something that looks ok, but don't worry about it.

Here are some of the fabrics that I tried:

Step 3: Quilting and Assembly

Once the outer borders are attached, square up your pillow to 20". Do as I say, not as I did :)  Sandwich your pillow top, just like you would any other quilt - spray or pins. 

And quilt it it. I used random straight-ish lines.

In the original pattern - there was an appliqued flower in the center of the pillow. Applique is not my strong suit but I remember loving the look when I saw it. I really can't remember what the flower looked like, now.  So I attempted to come up with some ideas. None of them made the cut. In the end I decided that I liked the pillow naked compared to my sad attempt to put something in the center. If I was to do this over, I might consider a dark center for the pillow.  But I plan to keep playing with the applique.

Square your top to 20" then make the back of your pillow. Here are some tutorials for pillow backs:

Freshly Picked: Envelope Back
Sew Mama Sew: Zipper Flap Pillow Back
Sew Katie Did: Invisible Zipper Pillow Back

Once the back is finished, sew it to the front and trim the corners.

Turn the pillow right side out and stuff with your pillow form. 

I really love this pillow and hopefully you, or whoever you make it for, will love it too. If you do make a version, please let me know - I'd be tickled pink to see it!

Thanks for stopping by,

 

Favourite Fabrics

After I read Kerry's blog post about her five favourite fabrics, this morning, I got to thinking about whether I could choose just 5 favourites.  Nope.  So I challenged myself to really think about those prints that might cause me to shed a tear or two when I use up my last piece. Since I haven't taken any stash photos for quite some time, I thought I'd join the linky.

1. Suzuko Koseki floor plans in pink. This is one of my most favourite fabrics. Ever. I love the scale of the print, the bit of text, and most of all the colour. The coralish red colour is my favourite right now and seems to go with everything that I sew. This scrap is my last piece and I am sure that I'll cry a little when I use it up.

2. Another SK print. I love all her flour sack prints but this one with the linen and blue is especially appealing to me.

3. The black is Kumiko Fujita and I have no idea what the green is. I want to put the green print in everything. The black was a "just because" purchase that turned out to be a favourite when it arrived. I only have 30cm so I'm saving it for just the right project.

4. Vintage strawberry fabric on a nubby cotton. It's no secret that I love all things strawberry and this fabric makes me so happy. I have 1 meter and hope to stretch it out into a quilt.

5. Mister Donut and cute suitcases. These came from Ayumi. They are hard to use (the Mr. Donut in particular) but they make me so happy to look at. I put a little piece of the Mr. Donut in my plus and x quilt. I'm saving the rest of the piece for something very special.  I love that these came from a friend and that they remind me of Japan.

I'm definitely someone who uses all my fabrics, so I won't be hoarding any of these but I will be waiting for the perfect moment to finish off each of the pieces. And it will be bitter sweet, for sure :)

For the "on display friend"

**The full tutorial is now available here**

Thank you for your patience! I've had a rough couple weeks. We went away for a few days over the long weekend then things just went downhill after we got back. I can tell by the number of people who have unsubscribed recently, that maybe I need to get myself together and post something.  So, I've decided to start my first gift tutorial even though my pillow isn't finished. A couple posts probably makes more sense because this is a long tutorial.

This tutorial is based on a pillow that I saw in a Japanese magazine last year. I couldn't afford the magazine at the time so I made a quick sketch of the pillow.  I feel bad that I never wrote down the name. At the time, I didn't know that it was made from courthouse step blocks! I didn't even know what courthouse steps block were until I made this quilt for my dqs10 partner and someone told me the name in the comments! Yay! I love to learn. If you know where to credit the design, please let me know!

I think this pillow would be good for the type of friend who likes to display your handmade gifts year-round. It's a strange mix of fun/traditional/modern and will end up a generous 20 inches. I have more planned for this pillow but this is the main part of the design:

Name: On Display Friend {Pillow}
Finished Size: 20"
Credit: Japanese Magazine (I'm assuming Cotton Time or Quilts Japan)
Sewing Style: Foundation Paper Pieced
Labour Level - Best Friend Status

Step 1: Choose Fabrics

You will need four fabrics per block.  The general idea is to have a light background, dark "star points," and medium corners. I'm not the best with values so my dark and medium run a rather blurry line. 

The very astute will notice that I didn't use many of the fabrics in my picture. Once I got going, I realized that some just weren't working for me. Pretty common among, quilters, I think!

If you read the specs, then you know that I foundation paper pieced the blocks. I made a template and will share it with you in part two: construction (only because I have no idea how to share a pdf, yet).  For now, here is a rundown of the colour layout for those of us who work better with schematics (note: I forgot to add "light" to the top middle image) (double note: "light" reminds me of bud light. Not sure why).

If you don't like to use foundation piecing, then head over to Kerry's blog and use her method. She is also in the midst of a (awesome) courthouse steps pillow tutorial and is not using foundation paper.

Once you have an idea of the fabrics that you want to use, you can either cut all your strips up front or cut as you go. I cut all my strips up front but didn't use a lot of them. No biggie - they are perfect for string quilts.

Here are my strips after they were cut.

You will need to cut the following fabrics:

Dark Fabrics: 8 prints each at least 1" x WOF
Medium Fabrics: 8 prints each at least 1" x WOF
Light Fabrics: 1-20 prints each at least 1" x WOF

Stay tuned for the next post on constructing the blocks and pillow, as well as updated pictures of my finished pillow! And this time there won't be such a lag.

Happy Tuesday and Thanks for reading.

 

Today's mantra

Source: iamthegirlanachronism.tumblr.com via Amy on Pinterest

I hope to be back tomorrow with a tutorial. In the meantime, check out this wreath and tree! I haven't made holiday decorations since I was a teenager but I'm pretty sure that wreath will break my dry spell!

Source: blog.betzwhite.com via Tamiko on Pinterest

{long} thoughts on gift-giving

This morning I walked into the kitchen only to be overcome by a weird mix of sadness, giddiness and horror because I had to do something I haven't done in a long time.

I had to turn on the light.

A dark morning is the surest sign that fall is upon us. I'm a little sad to say goodbye to the long summer days, giddy that my birthday is around the corner, and horrified by the thought of rising before the sun.

But the change of seasons signals the start of a sometimes fun (though often stressful) time for a lot of sewers/knitters/crafters, which is, of course, gift making.  As I was looking at all the gift ideas that people had pinned, this morning, it got me thinking about the gift making and giving process. 

I think that we (creative people) tend to get caught up in making or wanting to make gifts for everyone we know. We are willing to overlook the fact that the recipient might not get the same joy from receiving as we get from giving.  It's hard to believe but...

Some people don't like handmade gifts. (gasp!)

And we shouldn't judge them for it. We also shouldn't place our precious time and energy into making gifts for those people.  Even if they are relatives or best friends or other people who really *should* like what we make.

Most of us can recall that moment we gave a gift, that took an absurd amount of time and money, only to have the recipient say "oh thanks" and put it aside.  There's no greater buzz kill than an insincere thank you.  It's a hard reality because these are the gifts that delight our souls and elicit warm fuzzies.

Last year's winner for least liked handmade gift. Not my best work. But still.

But here's the thing. We all have THAT friend who loves our handmade items to pieces. The one who will use your reject potholder until there's a hole in it. The one who will show every house guest that plaid chicken tea cozy with the glitter glue embellishments, the one who thinks that quilted stars don't have points. Maybe you're lucky and have too many of those friends.

Those people should be given fabulous handmade gifts.

This year I plan to reflect on the people who really deserve my time (my crafting time) and creativity. Then put extra effort into making them extra-special handmade presents.  I hope you'll consider doing the same. Buy the rest a (handmade) card.  They won't know the difference.

To get the juices flowing, I have some tutorials planned. The first of which will be posted after the long weekend. The tutorials won't be quick-and-easy gifts because they are meant for that special friend who deserves your extra time. They will be a little more involved but just as special. And I hope that one of them will inspire you to shorten your "to-create-for" list so that you have more time for somebody special. Maybe there will be a give away in it for you too.

Have a safe and happy weekend.

 
p.s. thanks to Verykerryberry's blog for teaching me how to add a signature today!

***I didn't mean to imply that people who don't like handmade gifts, don't deserve anything, including your time. My post is strictly about our crafting time.  The gift of time spent with a person, helping a person, etc, is even more important and on a very different level***