Vintage Sheet Pillow Cover Projects
Friday, October 11, 2024
Happy Friday! Today I want to share a few recent pillow covers that I made using my vintage sheet stash!
Lately I've had good luck finding nice feather pillow forms at the Goodwill Outlet. Since they can't be washed, I seal them in big black trash bags and let them sit in the summer heat in our garage for a month or so before running them through the "sanitize" setting on our dryer. Once this group were ready to come into the house, I set about making covers for them! I had two 20" forms and one 24".
For the first 20" pillow form, I decided to make a pillow using the Woven Quilt pattern, which can be found in my book, Patchwork Essentials: The Half-Square Triangle. This one is made completely from scraps! Honestly, I'd love to make an entire quilt like this!! I really love how it turned out, so scrappy and happy. I used the wide hem of a sheet for the back, which worked pretty well! It gapes a little bit, could probably have made the two halves overlap more, but that's okay. It still works!
For the 24" pillow form I really wanted to use the pillow cover I made when I released my Giant Vintage Star Quilt Pattern. Unfortunately, at the time I could not find it anywhere (I've since found it, yay!). So I decided to make another one! I had just thrifted the background sheet, which is what I used as the starting point for this pillow. For this one I put in a simple zippered backing.
Last but not least, this pillow cover was a fun experiement. I wanted to make something that used up some more of the wide sheet hems. I put a foundation for the front and then sewed the sheet hems onto it, overlapping them to hide the raw edges. The result is pretty different from what I normally make, but I like it all the same! And I used up a couple hems, so win-win!!
Baby girl is climbing all over everything right now, so it's nice to have a few more pillows to add to the mix. Our couch is constantly surrounded by pillows since her preferred way to get off of it is headfirst! Haha. Also, I just love making pillow covers. They're not too time consuming, you can experiement, and they really liven things up in my opinion! These were a lot of fun to make.
Happy Sewing!
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Happy Tuesday! Today I wanted to share a recent quilt rescue project I undertook!
I've made it a habit to go to the Goodwill Outlet near us in the mornings on the weekend. Digging through the bins of linens and books is a great way for me to check out for 30 minutes or so. It's kind of chaotic, but different from my everyday chaotic, so I can really disconnect for a bit. I've found some incredible things there lately, including a few vintage quilts. I have a really hard time leaving those behind, despite the fact that we have a home full of quilts! Knowing that their next stop is a landfill just hurts.
That's how I ended up bringing home this little quilt! It's a small throw that was in pretty good shape considering. The main issues with it were the binding had mostly disintegrated, and it had almost no quilting holding it together. I knew it wouldn't take much to get this quilt back in working order.
The first thing I did was remove the binding and fix a couple small holes. In hindsight, I probably should have taken the time to replace the batting since it was all balled up in some places. But, we're working with very minimal crafting time over here, so! I knew it needed a decent amount of quilting to make sure it all continued to hold together. I went with a simple diagonal grid. I followed the lines of the patchwork, so the quilting is a bit funky, but that's okay.
Unfortunately, the old binding was not salvageable. Time for new!
All done! It's not a dramatic transformation, but I do think that it's life has been extended.
Other than the fun colors and prints in this quilt, my favorite thing about it is how soft it is. These fabrics have been washed so many times, it's extremely soft.
The back is a plain blue, you can really see the quilting on the back.
I loved the scrappiness of the old binding, but I really didn't have the right solids to recreate it. So I went with this nice woven stripe that's been in my stash forever. I believe it was also thrifted, which is nice!
It felt really good to bring this quilt home and give it a little tender loving care. It is now living a happy life as a car quilt. I keep it in the car to use as a quilt to use in the car, so take out at the park. I hope it has many more years of use in it now!
Happy Quilting!
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Happy Wednesday! I've made more vintage sheet bundles! This round of bundles are rainbow bundles, woo hoo! They're available in my shop now: Vintage Sheet Fat Quarter Bundles
Each bundle has eight fat quarters of vintage reclaimed bedsheet fabric. On top of the six rainbow colors there are two multi-colored prints in each bundle.
There are still some soft and subtle bundles left from the last update, and they go so well with the rainbow bundles! A bundle of each is perfect for making a Giant Vintage Star Quilt!
Wouldn't it look so pretty to use all different prints for the background? I want to make one!!
Happy Quilting!
Friday, September 27, 2024
Happy Friday! Today I wanted to share a project that I've become passionate about this past year, our Little Free Library!
After baby girl was born last year, we started walking way more in our neighborhood. Lucky for us, there are a bunch of little free libraries that we can walk to, and stopping at them became something to do on those walks. I usually had a small stash of books in the bottom of the stroller, ready to swap out for something! The libraries brought me so much joy, I realized how much I'd like to have one of our own!
We have a lot of walking traffic in front of our house, so I knew it would be a good spot for one! Unfortunately I was very short on time with a new baby and wasn't sure how I was going to manage to make one. I'm grateful that my Dad stepped in and took this project on for me! We worked together to come up with a design and he built it over the winter.
This Spring I put the finishing touches on it and we installed it. I also took it as an opportunity to expand my garden in this area, which is now the "Library Garden". It's growing in nicely, although there are a few things I need to swap out that aren't super happy.
I love being a little library steward. It's so fun to see people in our neighborhood interact with it. I try to keep the bottom shelf stocked with kids books and activity/coloring books, while the top shelf is for adult books. It's added to by passersby regularly, and I thrift a lot of books for it. The Goodwill Outlet here sells kids books for $.38 and adult books for $.68, so it's inexpensive to keep a stash of books on hand to keep the library full. I love the excuse to save books from the landfill!
Have a Great Weekend!
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