It’s only 11 weeks until Christmas. Eeek! Where did 2019 go? This year I’m trying to be more organised than I have been in past years, and I’m planning to make a lot of my Christmas presents (any family members reading this - please act surprised when you open your presents on Christmas morning!).
Over the next few weeks I will be sharing some easy and effective tutorials and patterns here on my blog as I’m sure there’s lots of people out there looking for gift ideas that are a bit different. Perhaps you are on a tight budget for presents this year, or maybe you are looking for ways to help use up your fabric stash and make room for all the amazing new fabric that will be arriving in 2020. Or are you trying to shop small this year and avoid the crowds at the shopping centres? Hopefully you will find these tutorials and patterns useful!
First up - pillowcases. I love the Envelope Pillowcase Tutorial by Aqua Paisley Studios and I have made these pillowcases many times now. They are a great way to use up those large scale prints that get lost when they’re cut into smaller pieces for a quilt, or you can use fun prints to make some unique pillowcases for kids. You can use up to four different fabrics in your pillowcases and it’s lots of fun to play around with different colour combinations. The way these pillowcases are constructed means that the inner pillow is completely covered up and has no chance of being seen!
The cute foxes in these pillow cases are from the Forest Spirit Range by Felice Regina (@iamlunasol on Instagram) and you can find this range in our online store here. You can also buy complete fabric kits to make the pillowcases for just $19. My kids are already fighting over who gets which one so I guess I’ll be making more! But next I will be making a more grown-up set using this gorgeous large-scale print by Shannon Newlin. In the past I have also used Anna Maria Horner fabric to make pillowcases - they are used whenever there is an Anna Maria Horner quilt on my bed.
I hope you get to make some pillowcases of your own! Thank you to Samantha of Aqua Paisley Studios for giving me permission to share her tutorial with you.
When I’m in a stash-busting mood I always look for a quick and easy yet effective quilt pattern. The Disappearing Four Patch is a handy pattern to keep on hand, as you can easily alter the size of the starting blocks to suit both the scale of the pattern on the fabric, and the amount of fabric that you want to use up. It also sews up quickly and doesn’t have any fiddly pieces, so it could easily come together in a day (oh the luxury of having a full and uninterrupted day of sewing - one day it will happen!)
I had some layer cakes of English Summer by Anna Maria Horner arrive recently (I’d forgotten I’d ordered them!) and as soon as I saw them my fingers started itching with anticipation and my mind started running through potential sewing patterns that would leave the gorgeous large-scale prints mostly intact. There was loads of inspiration on Pinterest (here’s my boards if you would like to see allllll the quilts I want to make one day!)
I used a tutorial by Jen Eskridge of Reanna Lily Designs and you can find the step-by-step tutorial here. The tutorial uses two layer cakes (10” squares) but I only wanted to use one layer cake so my finished quilt is smaller than the tutorial. I also had to cut a couple of co-ordinating Anna Maria Horner fat quarters into 10” squares so that I would have enough blocks to finish the quilt. If you don’t have a layer cake to use up, you could easily cut some fat eighths or fat quarters into 10” squares to make your quilt.
The blocks are large which means that everything sews up very quickly! I sewed this together over the course of a few days and it was very easy to pick up and put down again. I tried to pair up fabrics that contrasted so that the pattern would show through when all the blocks were joined together. The hardest part was arranging the final blocks and trying not to place the same fabrics next to each other.
The quilt is backed with a dark grey fabric that is printed with chicken-feed logos (I felt the quilt needed a quiet backing to contrast with the bright front) and I quilted it myself on my Janome Memory Craft 6500 with the walking foot. I traced a quarter-circle at the bottom right hand corner of the quilt using a dinner plate and my Hera marker, and then followed this line leaving about 2” between each row. I used a dark purple thread to quilt with. The quilt is bound using this fabric from Tambourine by Anna Maria Horner as I felt it complemented all the colours in the quilt, even though it is from a different fabric range. I love how different fabric ranges work together!
The finished size of this quilt is 52” x 72” (1.3m x 1.82m) so it’s perfect for use on a single bed or for use on the couch while watching a movie.
