Constructing Cthulhu

I was finally able to sew together the Cthulhu pillow I designed - I gave it to my niece for her birthday. Fortunately, my design worked the way I was hoping so I don't need to tweak the fabric.

I got it printed out on the "minky" fabric, which looked like this:


Then cut out all the pieces.


First, I sewed together the inner pillow, right sides together, leaving a gap for reversing and stuffing.




Then I filled it with rice. (And sewed the gap shut - by hand - after taking this picture)


Next, I sewed the two sides of the slipcase together separately - just along the curve, leaving the bottom open.


Then, I turned one half of the slipcase right side out and put it inside the other.


I sewed the two halves together, again leaving a gap.


Here's what it looks like turned right side out.


And then turned so that the lining is inside the outer case, gap sewn shut.


And voila, now the rice-filled pillow can be heated or cooled, and placed inside the slipcover!




Also you can reverse the slipcover to show the pattern on the other side.

Pretty good results

Continuing up the ladder from middling contest results, we can now enjoy reflecting on some that did a little better.

We had the first coordinates contest we've had for awhile, with a theme of sewing notions. I decided right off to expand on my existing stitching design, using the colors I originally tried out on the feather design. For the other coordinating designs, I immediately wanted to include hooks and eyes, since I've always found those very aesthetically appealing. And the pink in the color scheme reminded me of the pink sewing box Gramma Liz gave me for Christmas one year, soon after I really got into sewing as a kid, filled with all colors of thread and interesting notions. If I had more time, I would have drawn a bunch of different sewing accouterments flying out of it, but instead focused on the box itself. For the last pattern, I just wanted to do some kind of silhouette that I could fill in with different textures, so I went with ironing boards.



This got 95 votes and came in the top third of entries. I'm particularly happy with how the hooks-and-eyes design turned out. The entries this week were honestly quite repetitive (so many spools of thread!) but my favorites were these two.

Then a bit of a strange theme - beards and mustaches.  I included all the animals I could find that have something resembling facial hair. For the colors, I reused the set I've used a couple times for different animal patterns.



This got 78 votes, and alllllmost made it into the top quarter of entries. My favorite was this psychedelic assortment.

Oh dear...

Hello blog! Long time no see! It's been all I can do lately to keep with my day job, my son, and just squeak in a Spoonflower contest entry every week. Now it's time to see if I can slip back in a little blog posting here and there.

Good news - I actually managed to do a little sewing for fun. I made "treat bags" for my son, nephew, and niece, to hold a few toys for the drive for a trip my family took all together. When I was a kid, we used to go camping up in the redwoods every year, and now that all the grandkids are old enough (4, 3, and 2) my parents decided to reinstate this tradition.

My grandmother, for these (and other) long car drives, used to make each of us these bags. My brother reminded me of that a few weeks before the trip, so I started to mull the idea of making my own version of them. I have quite a few fat quarters lying around from all my Spoonflower samples, so there's plenty of material to work with. I even looked up a pattern on how to make a little drawstring bag out of a fat quarter. But I was so busy trying to get ahead at work before the trip, I didn't think I was going to have the time.

One evening, after my son was asleep and I was just about to log back in to work, our power went out. Well, gosh, I guess since I can't work or use wifi on my iPhone I could sew instead! And thus I was able to get a toehold on the sewing, and made all three bags in time for the trip.

The patterns used here are the campground map, soil formation stripes, and ballet-dancing t-rexes. The bias tape on the B-for-Bruce bag is leftovers from Cord's quilt, on the I-for-Isabel bag is leftovers from Maren's quilt, and on the E-for-Emmett bag is some I had gotten as an alternate for Maren's quilt but didn't use.