Amy Butler Snow Mum Pillow: DONE!

Yes, folks, the Amy Butler Snow Mum Pillow is done! I was inspired by Peacock Chic (and her button addition) to make this pillow!

Here's where I started today:

• This afternoon, I painted the wooden button to be the same creamy color of the fabric.
• Tonight, I sewed the mum to the center of the pillow (I made my pillow 14x14 inches instead of 18x18 inches, so that is why I centered the mum instead of relegating it to the corner like in Amy's directions).
• Although Amy's pillow didn't call for it, I then decided which trim to use (smaller or larger--both are shown below--I chose smaller)
  

Here I am in the midst of sewing the trim on:


As the sun was setting on polluted New Jersey:


I didn't really know how to finish the trim off, I just turned it under at the bottom. It wasn't true piping so I didn't know how to finish it.

I sewed the back on, shoved the pillow form in, and voila, it's done!


The pillow form doesn't seem to fill out the pillow very well. I can always fill it out with some stuffing, esp in the corners. The pillow also looks rather, um, curvy? But I know I sewed it together straight--not sure what went wrong there...

Here's the back. It doesn't have a zipper, but an overlapping bit that effectively keeps the pillow from popping out:


I'm almost done with another shirt, but that's for another post.
I also have a diagnosis for my back issues, also for another post.
Good night!!

The Asterisk Pillow in All Its Glory

The Asterisk Pillow, Casa Kyle

I met Leslie last year at PR Day Austin 2011.  When she introduced herself to folks, she would say, "I'm Leslie--the Other Leslie in Austin".  The Other Leslie in Austin has a delightful blog called The Seasoned Homemaker.    It turns out Leslie teaches sewing in Austin as well as living there.  This summer she posted a series of tutorials on pillows that were really a broad education in the basics of sewing.  I have been sewing since age 12 and learned things in the tutorials I only recently learned or started doing in the past few years or never even tried at that point (like French seams).    She is serious about her tutes, and they are spot-on.  Detailed instructions, with pix, no stone goes unturned in her tutorials. 

I saw her ampersand pillow tutorial and had to have it.  (Wouldn't it be cute for an engagement photo? Couple sits on couch holding the pillow between them?)
By the time I got around to making it, I changed it to an asterisk. 
I used Leslie's piping tutorial to make piping for the second time in my life.  The first time is here.  It really is easy to make your own piping.

Then came time for the asterisk.  I had saved some asterisk templates from my reverse applique phase (one attempt is here).   But none of them were large enough for the pillow.  I had planned on going to Staples and getting one of them enlarged but I didn't.  So I had to enlarge it the old fashioned way, using a technique I learned in high school art class.

I got out some graph paper (a notepad left over from my old job)....and traced around the two templates I had. 


Why I felt the need to autograph this "piece of work", I don't know.

And then I traced it on the "grid interfacing-type-stuff" which is used for tracing patterns. The grid there is 1x1 inch. So the larger of my asterisk templates would produce a 14x14" asterisk--perfect for a 16x16" pillow.  But I wound up folding it into quarters and cutting....which is why it doesn't really follow the lines I drew...

The turquoise fabric I used is uplostery fabric remnant that has been in my stash for ages.
I used heat and bond on the turquoise fabric.
Then I cut out the asterisk using my rotary cutter.
Then I fused it onto the pillow front.

Then I stitched it onto pillow. I used a zig zag stitch set at stitch width 3 and stitch length, er, it was probably 1? I can't remember, it was last weekend. But I played with some samples first to get the stitching to be what I wanted. I guess my note to myself for next time is to stitch OVER the raw edge and onto the base fabric a little bit, so that the raw edge gets completely covered.  You can see I didn't always get the entire raw edge covered so it's fraying a little.

And then it looked like this:

and on the back it looked like this:

So I got to use my Kai needle craft scissors, with double curved blades. I bought these at the ASE and OMG how did I live without them? They are AMAZING. Look at how easily you can snip off threads when the blade is curved doubly?  You can get really close to the fabric without contorting your hand or the fabric....you need these scissors in your life!

Also you can see this is one of my samples where I was trying to figure out stitch length for the applique; and also practicing that tight curve.  And I threw some piping on top so you can see the piping I made.

At that point I finished up the pillow as per her tutorials (a combo of the envelope pillow and the piping tutorials).


Here it is on my living room couch

My living room decor is Hawaiian-style.  I feel like the asterisk could also be vaguely flower-esque.

Aloha!
If I make this pillow again, I will enlarge both back pieces so there is more of an overlap.  My pillow is kind of bursting out the back, but I think that's probably due to operator error or deviations (using larger seam allowances, and larger widths for finishing the exposed edges of the back of the pillow (the "envelope" part where the pillow is inserted).  I might sew in snaps back there or buttons/buttonholes.

The other pillows on the red couch are from Pier One, but the pillow on the ivory chair is one I made in 2009. It's the Amy Butler Mum Pillow, which I blogged about in several posts, the last of which is here. The free pattern for it is here on Amy's site.

It always looked a little flaccid in the corners so I used some stuffing to fill it out last weekend--MUCH better.

I have always adored the pillow--it makes me smile.

So here is a teaser for what I'm working on now:

It's Burda Style 7253.
That rose button is just pinned on for the photos.

Look at how nice and even the gathers are on one side but not the other. Hmmm...I will have to play with that. I used my serger for gathering, but I was paying more attention to getting the band width right, and not as much about the gathers, when sewing the band to the dress front.  I'm still tweaking the fit, and have to bind armholes and sew the back kickpleat and hem.


Here are the Princeton Farmers Market flowers from 3 weeks ago. I have bought pretty much the same bunches the last two weeks too, they are very similar! I think this might have been the last week for the flowers as it hit 32F on Friday night. (then today it was 75F....)

I love their vibrant colors! These are zinnias and have become my go-to flower after the end of the black eyed susans. I especially love the green ones (just one in this photo).

Last weekend I harvested the remaining 3 mini-pumpkins (gourds). So I harvested 7 total and gave 3 away.

And finally, I decided to start cooking again. Here's my dinner tonight:

Chicken noodle soup, made with parsley from my garden.  I felt proud of my "knife skills" tonight.  Chopping used to take ages and now it's relatively fast.  Improvement, progress, yes!

So thank you to the Other Leslie in Austin for posting such great tutorials, and for encouraging general sewing improvement all around!   By the way, right now she is doing a 31 day series of tutorials on embroidery machines, if you're interested.

By the way, if you're on Blogger, could you please check your stats and see if they have disappeared?  All my stats for page views/sources/etc seem to have been reset today back to 0????    Why?  How?  I don't know???  I don't know who to write to about it?  I liked my stats!  At least my blog still exists, and the comments are still there....  OK, I just googled "blogger stats reset" and it happened to everyone with a blogger blog...I'm not the only one...phew!

Be well!!

Start of a pillow & will you be at the ASE?

Turquoise piping made by moi.

As you know I mainly sew garments and not  much home dec.

The last home dec item I made was the Amy Butler mum pillow here from 2009.


I blogged about it here.

However I was inspired by this pillow tutorial on the Seasoned Homemaker's blog.  So I started making an envelope pillow.  I fused a lot of interfacing on Sunday to the pillow front and back.   Last night I made piping following Leslie's piping directions here.  Very fun.  Making yer own piping is really easy.   I am thinking I will put an asterisk on the pillow instead of a mustache or ampersand. But I might go for the ampersand...

Tomorrow I fly to the American Sewing Expo in Novi, MI for the third year in a row.  I am excited to meet up with Bonnie and Lynnelle.  I will be at the 9am blogger's meetup on Saturday morning and will be taking several classes and also shopping.  I will be at the Friday night fashion show and Saturday Passion for Fashion.  Unlike previous years I am not taking a computer with me, so no blogging from the ASE but I will tweet and of course fill you in on all the action afterward.

Hope to see you there!!!  Now it's time for me to keep on procrastinating with the packing....

Warm, springy, happy feelings

It is warm and springy, the flowers are busting out of the ground, Rita's is open again, I still feel like a rock star from the conference I attended, my gym instructor has added lower back stretches to the routine, I start physical therapy next week, and I'm visiting Pete in England at the end of the month. Does it get any better than that?

Since M liked the yellow flower pix, here are two more flower pix. Love the fake grapes lying there in the dirt; they're from a wreath I used to have hanging on my front door. The gray strip of door insulation used to be on my door frame too, ha ha! Oh, entropy.

Yellow hyacinth

Blue flowers I don't remember the name of

I've made some more progress on the Amy Butler Snow Mum Pillow. Last night I cut out the medium & small petals with my embroidery scissors (I abandoned the rotary cutter for this task). Tonight I sewed a 1/8" seam down 1" of all 20 large, 16 medium and 12 small petals. I tried to sew the seam for the center petal, but I don't like the results. I might rip that out and leave it sans seam, or try a half inch instead of an inch. It looks like a starfish in the picture. The circle is the flower base.

Maybe I'll try cutting the threads off later tonight.

Gosh, could I have this pillow done by the end of the week?? er, weekend? I need to:

• assemble the flower
• sew the flower to the pillow front
• sew on the piping
• hem the back pieces
• sew the back pieces to the front
• insert pillow form
• admire & photograph my work

I'm thinking, if I'm going to make my wedding dress, I should try making a dress soon, since it's been awhile since I made a dress. But there are still some shirts I want to make.

Oh, and rocketboy posted a review of a buttondown shirt he made. He is talented! He sewed that shirt out of a bed sheet. Another good reminder that fabric is everywhere.

And check out my competition for the Sewn Hat contest. I believe voting starts April 2.

In progress, please stand by

Thought I'd share some works in progress with you. Wow, isn't "works" a lofty word in this context?

Work 1:

I don't know, for some reason (the pattern directions didn't say to) I thought I could get away with not gathering the sleeve caps before sewing them into the shirt. Ha ha ha ha ha. And I was so sure, I didn't baste them in. Ha ha ha ha ha. At least I only sewed down one sleeve.

Guess who will be spending some serious quality time with her seam ripper?
See the last time I made this shirt it was sleeveless, so I did not have to bear these problems.

Work 2:
It's Amy Butler's Snow Mum Pillow!
I really loved what Peacock Chic did with this pillow pattern and I felt I had to make it.

Though it features a lot of my nemesis interfacing and that heat n' bond stuff, my new good friend piping will be added to the pillow. This is a mainly thoughtless project for now. Iron a lot, cut approx 500 petals and sew. Ha ha! It's also good for using my new rotary cutter and mat. Maybe I need a smaller cutter for these delicate little petals. Some of them are kinda ugly. I need to improve my rotary cutting skills.

So far I've cut out 20 large petals and I've interfaced the front pillow section. On the left are the 20 petals, which I've arranged like a leafy vine for now, just to show you (hmmm...another pillow idea??). The burgundy is just for contrast, so you can see the petals. The right side is the flannel I'm using for the pillow front and back. Don't you just love the pintucked squares? I do!

I'm making it 14 x 14 and will for the first time in my life use a pillow form. Those forms are $$$, so that's why I chose the size I did instead of the 18 x 18 Amy recommends. JoAnn's already has enough of my hard earned cash, thanks.

Anyway, I can totally see making a cool pin out of the petals...can't you?

Til next time...

EPIC WIN: My 2009 Sewing Favorites

Almost two weeks ago I blogged about my 2009 Sewing Disasters. Today it's time for a positive spin with my 2009 retrospective on my sewing wins!

Let's start the show!

I think it's a tie for my two favorite garments of the year.

1. First up is my white jacket:

I fell in love with the embroidered fabric at JoAnn's, ignored it for a shopping trip or two, finally succumbed to it even though the fabric is impractically white. I whipped up a coat in a weekend-ish.

I'm not loving them hem, but I was very proud of the bias taped interior finish. You know I must be, because I never showed the interior of a garment before, have I? I added pockets the following weekend because the lack of pockets was driving me insane.


I also added the loop for hanging up the coat in my gym locker:



I also love these buttons (though the jacket actually snaps shut):


I wore it everyday until the temp dropped to the 30's.

2. This is a tie for #1, essentially. It was my first attempt at piping something, and I absolutely fell in love with the technique!


I wore it all winter. And now I'm wearing it again on weekends. Plus I finally got to use stash fabric that's upwards of 12 years old!


3. So once I started piping, I couldn't stop, with this nightgown and bathrobe set!
I wore the bathrobe every weekend during the summer.


Overall, I think it's pretty cool.

I also made the nightgown again, this time in a black print with red piping:


I actually never wore this nightgown, though (yes I can hear you all gasping!)


4. I was doing physical therapy when I made this pillow (I mean, not during therapy itself). I told the therapist that I sew, and when she asked what I was making, she sort of scoffed at the idea of a pillow, like pillows are so easy. But this was more complicated than what I think she had in mind:

At the time, I believe I blogged that it's one of those projects best done slowly, a bit at a time. There's no instant gratification with a pillow like this.
I really should fill out the corners with some stuffing (it's currently stuffed with a pillowform).

I look at it everyday on my Ikea chair and it makes me smile.


5. I just adore this cowl neck shirt. I made it again this year, this time in gray. It was worn quite frequently, along with the original pink version.

The ties on the back are just adorable.


6. I only made this 2 weekends ago, but it is destined to become a shirt I wear frequently. I was unsure of the overall look, but I wore it to work and felt very comfy in it. The fabric is just delightful and soft!!


7. I was pretty happy with this shirt that looks more like a jacket once the puckering collar issue was resolved. I wear it about once a week. I rediscovered the joy of princess seaming.

I never should have washed it, though. It was kind of brutal to the fabric.

8. I'm very fond of this Built by Wendy shirt, especially now that I've worked the sizing of the biceps out! I think the ties are adorable!


9. I really love the pleating of this neckline!


10. And I like my little giftmas gift to myself: this red nightgown. I've worn it quite a lot lately.


So that's it for my 2009 epic wins! I think my next "epic" post will be about what I learned about sewing this year. :)

So it was a lot funnier to write about failures than the wins...Good night!