Would You Like Me To Sew You A Word? Because I Have Alphabet Quilt Block Patterns Now and I Am Unstoppable.

Spelling Bee by Lori Holt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have long wanted a good alphabet quilt block pattern, mostly for monogramming and personalizing things, but I don’t want to learn foundation paper piecing (yet! I’m sure the day is coming!), and the online patterns that I’ve tried work, but they’re usually sort of blocky and/or the sizing is uneven, etc.

This book is genuinely exactly what I wanted.

The letter blocks in two sizes, 6” and 12”, are perfect--although, fine, I would also like them in 20” so that I can monogram giant pillows, but I understand the scale of that would quickly become maniacal. And I’m just saying that if the author also handed patterns for 4” blocks to me I wouldn’t say no, but on the whole I can do pretty much anything I want to do with 6 inches and 12 inches.

I had no issue piecing this percent sign block and assembling my table runner, but for some reason last night I became absolutely consumed with the idea that I'd put it in sideways, so the diagonal went the wrong way and the circles were on the wrong sides. They are NOT, the block is perfect, but I will absolutely check 14 more times and then Google it to double-check and then worry that Google is wrong and I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that but just give up, I guess. 

This is the direction a percent sign goes, right?

RIGHT?!?

I sometimes have a hard time paying attention to pattern instructions, because I’d rather just get the gist and then go off on my own and likely as not mess stuff up, but fortunately the instructions for each letter block are actually quite short, so even I could generally manage to follow them. I only had to seam rip a couple of things in my most recent project, and that was only because I was paying attention to hockey on TV and not what I was doing. The Boston Fleet are having an AWESOME season!

Seriously, though--this IS how a percent sign goes, right?

I would have liked some guidance on sashing widths that would make proper spacing between letters and words (although honestly, it’s probably in there and I just wasn’t paying attention), and on good border widths, but with a little trial and error I figured out that a 1” piece (.5” finished) is perfect between letters--

and I used 2.5” (2” finished) between words. I want to make multiple lines of text in my next project, so I’m thinking 2.5” again just to make the cutting more efficient. But maybe I should do 2”?

I’ll probably double-check the book before I decide, ahem.

Moveable alphabets are things, like Base 10 blocks, number patterns, and rainbow order, that please me greatly--they're just so organized and satisfying!--and I always like finding new ways to manipulate them. I still dream fondly of that wool felt moveable alphabet that I sewed for my young niece one Christmas--all the letters! All the colors! You could spell words with the letters! And the words would be different colors! So you will understand completely when I tell you that I am VERY excited to make a wall quilt that has my favorite Wilbur Wright quote on it. 

And then maybe a set of couch pillows with all the family's monograms.

Oh, and would the younger kid and her roommates next year like to have matching monogrammed throw pillows for their beds? The kid actually LOATHES it when I craft for her friends, because apparently nobody's else's parents put random hand-sewn gifts for strangers in their child's care packages and being unlike others is apparently something that we are meant to care about now and also a sign that I "do too much," but surely she'd come around for matching monogrammed throw pillows! And maybe just one singular bunting with their college name on it for their common room? And then maybe little quilted hangings with each of their names on it for their bedroom doors?

Okay, fine, yes, I DO hear myself here, and I do see where possibly just very potentially that "doing too much" accusation is perhaps coming from.

Sooo... just the throw pillows and the bunting, then?

P.S. View all my reviews

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I Get to Enjoy My Quilted St. Patrick's Day Table Runner for 30 Hours Before I Have To Put It Away

One year ago, I had the idea to make a table runner for St. Patrick's Day using a deep cut from my Ancestry DNA test. My family has been in America for shockingly long considering how poor we still are. You'd think that people who were in the country before it became a country would have built up some kind of generational wealth by now, but I guess my people were too busy subsistence farming in the asshole parts of Kentucky and Arkansas to enslave other people's ancestors or steal land from the indigenous populations. I'd tell you that it's nice not to have that history of wrongs on my conscience, but somehow they all ended up fighting on the wrong side of the Civil War anyway, sigh.

Anyway, before they lived life in America working all the least profitable vocations and never buying any good land, all my ancestors came from around the Great Britain-ish area. I've got at least a couple of ancestors who emigrated in the early 1700s from Wiltshire, which you know I find super exciting because they knew Stonehenge! I know of a couple more ancestors who came from York, which tracks because Ancestry says about 22% of my DNA comes from northeast England. My DNA as a whole, according to Ancestry, is basically an amalgamation of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, with a few Celts thrown in. Ancestry says I'm 6% Welsh, which in my mind perfectly explains how I picked up Middle Welsh so easily in grad school (I haven't read it since, but we don't need to talk about that part) and 11% Irish.  

I've never tried my hand at Irish Gaelic, but my heart tells me that I'd also pick it up super quickly. I am not taking questions about this statement at this time.

The Welsh lineage has yet to reveal itself in my family tree, but the Irish part does track, since I can trace a couple of McClanahans who emigrated from County Tyrone in Ireland way back in the 1600s. Congratulations on missing the Potato Famine, guys, but you literally landed in Virginia, so why the hell did your grandkids decide to move to a stupid rocky mountain in Arkansas and cosplay famine living?

I say from the middle of bumfuck Indiana, where I own approximately 6 acres of property that tries very hard to be a wetland, including a 1,000 square foot house that tries very hard to fall apart at the seams at all times. Literally--I got up yesterday morning to discover that one of the bathroom floor tiles--WHICH IS PRACTICALLY BRAND NEW!!!--had worked itself loose, and there's a section of the family room floor--ALSO PRACTICALLY BRAND NEW!!!--abutting an outside wall that has clear signs of water damage that mysteriously just appeared one day. It's almost like having a whole entire giant elm tree fall right on top of your house is just generally bad for it!

FYI for the future when I one day need to try to sell this money pit: I HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF ANY FOUNDATION ISSUES. Also, I'll for sure be selling this place as-is. I don't want to have to replace the terrible windows, there's definitely something squirrely with the septic system but it still works fine so I'm just ignoring it, and I think there's a human grave about ten feet from the back deck.

ANYWAY. I had the idea for a St. Patricks' Day table runner themed on my Irish DNA a year ago, but as of a month ago, that project still looked like this:

This is Spelling Bee, by Lori Holt, and it is my favorite sewing book. I hog my library's copy, so if you want it you'll have to put it on hold.

Fortunately, I made plenty of progress after that, and two weeks ago, the project looked like this, all pieced and ready to be backed, quilted, and bound:

And then I got kind of busy at work, and then the younger kid came home for Spring Break, so I did not touch it again until yesterday, when I spent half the evening binging The Crown (I LOATHE how everyone treated poor Diana OMG! And damn but Scully goes hard on that Margaret Thatcher dialect!) and doing this:

And now I have this!

Because I did all the quilting literally yesterday, I didn't feel like going to the store for green thread and convinced myself that it's more eco-friendly and a better embodiment of my vow to boycott the economy to use the closest match that I had on hand, which was only slightly greenish and looks frankly pretty darn brown now that it's covering the table runner and can't be taken back:

Whatever. It's not perfect, but it's done, and that's much, much better!

Other than that--and, okay, the fact that I need to do probably one more round of quilting right there by the binding--I LOVE my new table runner. I'm obsessed with how the piecing turned out, and I like the look of the quilting (if not the color of the thread, dang it):

I'm not sure if the joke is too obscure, or just too stupid, though, because everyone I've tried to show my table runner to looks kind of nonplussed about it, and then when I explain the joke--("It's my Ancestry DNA! It says I'm 11% Irish!") they honestly somehow look even more nonplussed, but whatever. I think it's hilarious, and I'm the only voting demographic!

This morning, I got to start my St. Patrick's Day with my brand-new table runner, coffee and a chapter in my latest book--

--and then we hung out together while I worked and ate a delicious sandwich and drank more coffee:

Now excuse me, because I have seven more hours to enjoy my table runner before it's no longer St. Patrick's Day. Time to pour some Bailey's and listen to my B*Witched/Sinead O'Connor/Kingfishr/Pogues Spotify playlist!

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Two Off-Season Witch Hats, and One Perfectly Seasonal Table Runner

Somehow I do keep finding fancy fabric! I genuinely thought I'd used up all the kid's leftover Trashion/Refashion sewing stash, all those bits and pieces and scraps and the occasional completely untouched piece of thrifted formalware and scrounged luxury material... and then Mr. Craft Knife helped me organize my fabric one cold and slushy January day, and you'll never guess what I found stuffed at the bottom of one very overstuffed crate.

Ah, well. That navy satin formal dress and black lace T-shirt may not have ever made the cut (lol) as runway material, but it made a BEAUTIFUL witch hat!

I'm high-key obsessed with an interesting texture on top of something smooth and shiny, and I LOVE how two disparate pieces can look like they were made for each other:

And yay for Spring Break, when my favorite witch hat model became briefly available to model this latest hat for my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop!

Over the weekend, we swung by my favorite local arts and crafts thrift store because I really needed quilt batting. Alas that I did not find any there, and ended up having to buy some from Satan himself (I miss you, Joann!), buuut I did find two gallon-sized Ziplock bags full of THESE treasures!

I originally bought it just because the light blue colorway is the younger kid's class color at her school, so I'm always needing more baby blue for handmade gifts for her and her buddies, but that long piece is SO big, and so beautifully pieced--look at those perfect open seams!--

--that honestly, I'm probably going to save the smaller blocks for sewing for the kid, and turn that big block into another witch hat. It's just too perfect not to!

But here's what I needed that emergency quilt batting for!

The big kid got me one of those DNA kits for Christmas a couple of years ago, and while it turns out that, unsurprisingly, I am overall entirely from the UK region, there is apparently about 11% of me that's from the Irish part.

How appropriate for the season!

To piece the letter, number, and punctuation blocks, I used Spelling Bee, by Lori Holt, a book that I've actually been dying to use for over a year now, and I was NOT disappointed. The instructions are super easy to follow, and the couple of times I had to seam rip and try again were only because I was paying more attention to hockey on the TV than to what I was doing. I guessed a little about proper sashing width between the individual letters and between the words, but I think they look right:

I've got a couple more projects already cued up after I finish this table runner (fingers crossed it's at least before St. Patrick's Day!), but then I really want to try making a wall hanging featuring my favorite Wilbur Wright quote:

Not within a thousand years would man ever fly!

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Sew a Wildlife Rescue Pouch from Fleece Scraps

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Your local wildlife rescue wants your fleece scraps!

Not as-is, of course, because what would be the fun in that? Rather, if there’s an organization near you that rescues orphaned or injured wildlife for rehabilitation, it probably needs as many of these simple, easy-to-sew fleece pouches as you can make.

Wildlife rescues use fleece pouches to contain small and baby animals in a way that keeps them feeling safe and comfortable. It mimics the type of pouch that a marsupial animal will be familiar with, and recreates the feeling of a nest for other animals. It helps keep animals comfortably contained while they recover, and gives them a sense of security that a cage doesn’t.

Requiring only four straight seams, these fleece pouches are also incredibly easy to sew. If you’ve got a beginner or young sewist, this is a great first project!

The potential for scrapbusting, though, is my favorite part! I don’t usually like to work with fleece, so the scraps from my few and far between fleece projects tend to linger. This latest batch of pouches, though, helped me usefully get rid of all the last scraps from the mermaid, shark, and mermaid skeleton snuggle sacks that I sewed for my kids last Christmas. That mermaid skeleton, especially, required a lot of inconvenient cuts into a giant length of white fleece, so I am THRILLED that it is now out of my fabric bin for good!

Here’s what you need to make your own fleece pouches to donate:

• scrap fleece. The smallest pouch that my local wildlife rescue uses is 4″x4″, which means that the smallest fleece scrap that I can use are approximately 5″x9″. The largest pouches they need are approximately 12″x12″, so my largest scrap cuts are approximately 13″x25″. You can generally use any size between those two dimensions.
• measuring and cutting tools. After catching my teenager, the most responsible person in the family after me, in the act of using my favorite fabric scissors to cut a price tag off a shirt, I recently bought a new pair of fabric scissors and I changed my family scissors rule to forbid ANYONE ELSE FROM USING THESE SCISSORS. I don’t care what you need them for–you cannot use my scissors! You want to beat up a pair of scissors? Buy yourself a pair to beat up, because you’re staying far away from mine.
• sewing supplies. Because the orphaned baby raccoons don’t care, I like to use this project to finish up half-empty bobbins and my grossest neon orange thread.

Before you begin, contact the wildlife rescue that you have in mind and ask them if these pouches are an appropriate donation and if so, what sizes they prefer. These are the pouches and sizes that my local wildlife rescue has requested, but your rescue may want something different depending on the types of wildlife they commonly encounter. It’s very bad form to burden a non-profit with stuff they don’t want, so do your research!

If your local wildlife rescue doesn’t need any fleece pouches, I’ve included the mailing address of my local rescue at the end of this post.

Step 1: Cut fabric scraps to size.

The whole point of a big back deck is to make a big mess on it!

For each pouch, you will need two pieces of fleece that are the same size. Here are the dimensions of pouches I most commonly sew, based on what my local wildlife rescue requests:

• 4″x4″ pouch: two pieces of fleece that are 5″x9″.
• 6″x6″ pouch: two pieces of fleece that are 7″x13″.
• 6″x8″ pouch (opening on the long side): two pieces of fleece that are 9″x13″.
• 8″x8″ pouch: two pieces of fleece that are 9″x17″.
• 12″x8″ pouch (opening on the short side): two pieces of fleece that are 9″x25″.

Because my local wildlife rescue tends to need the larger sizes more, I like to start cutting the largest sizes I can first, then gradually move down the list as my scrap sizes also diminish.

Since the sizing also only needs to be approximate, you can also eliminate waste by cutting pieces between any of these sizes.

Step 2: Sew each piece into a pouch.

Fold each fleece piece in half (halve the long side of each piece), then sew down each of the two sides adjacent to the fold. Trim all thread.

You’ll have a simple pouch with an open end opposite the fold. You’ll need two of these for each wildlife rescue pouch.

Step 3: Sew the pouches together.

Turn one pouch right side out, then place it inside a second pouch. The right sides of the pouches should now be facing each other, but the pouch on the outside should still be inside-out.

Sew around the top edge to sew the pouches together, leaving a few inches unsewn for turning.

Turn the pouches right sides out through that hole.

Fold the pouch that you’d like to be on the inside to the inside, and straighten the seam around the top edge by hand, finger pressing the raw edges of that unsewn opening to the inside.

Top stitch around the top edge of the pouch, sewing closed that unsewn section as you go.

Give the entire pouch another look, making sure there are no loose threads for a tiny animal to tangle in or skipped stitches that would leave a hole for a tiny animal to get stuck in.

This is optional, but I like to wash and dry my finished pouches before I donate them, just to make sure they’re squeaky clean and free of skin oils and dust and dog fur.

Above is my recent donation–not bad for a couple of hours and a bunch of scraps I was thrilled to get rid of!

If you don’t have a wildlife rescue organization near you, this is the mailing address for my local wildlife rescue:

WILDCARE, INC.

198 N. HARTSTRAIT RD.

BLOOMINGTON, IN, 47401

Here's what I did with the rest of that fleece!

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How to Sew an Envelope-Back Pillowcase

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

A pillowcase with an envelope back is the easiest type of pillowcase to sew!

At least for decorative pillows! If you’re sewing a pillow for a bed, do yourself a favor and check out the “magic” pillowcase tutorial.

I like how neat and polished an envelope-back pillowcase looks, even more so than one with a zipper, in my opinion. Omitting that zipper also makes an envelope-back pillowcase much more comfortable, meaning that your decorative pillow can also perform its second most important job of Naptime Support Specialist. Or, if you have two decorative pillows, the third most important job of Footrest.

It’s very easy to make an envelope-back pillowcase from scratch, even if you’re a novice sewist. Here’s how!

Materials

To make an envelope-back pillowcase, you will need:

• pillow form. I’m using a 16″x16″ pillow for this project, but here’s an example of a 26″x26″ pillowcase that I sewed from quilting cotton.
• fabric. You’ll need three pieces of fabric approximately the size of your pillow plus 1.5″. You’ll cut two of those pieces down to size, so read through the instructions first if you have some smaller, scrappier pieces you want to use, and you’ll see how to calculate the exact yardage you need for your specific pillow.
• bias tape. You need two pieces of approximately 1/4″ bias tape, each as long as your pillow plus 1.5″. Bias tape is SUPER easy to make from scratch, so you can perfectly match your pillowcase fabric, if you’d like.
• measuring, pinning, cutting and sewing supplies.

Step 1: Measure and cut your pillowcase pieces.

Your pillow form should have a tag that gives its dimensions. If not, simply measure its length and width with a fabric measuring tape. If your pillow is rectangular instead of square like mine, you can still make an envelope back pillowcase for it; just decide which way you want the pillow oriented, and calculate, cut, and sew accordingly.

The front panel should measure one 1.5″ wider than the pillow form on both length and width if you want a snug fit like the one in these photos, and 2.5″ or even more if you want more ease. A looser fit is easier to stuff and change, but a snug fit looks nicer, in my opinion.

For my 16″x16″ pillow, my front panel is 17.5″x17.5″. Just between us, this made for a pillowcase that’s a little too snug, because I didn’t account for how fat that pillow form is! It still fits, but there’s some whiskering across the width and if it gets a lot of wear I’ll probably be mending around that applique in a few years. So let my mistake guide you, and take the fatness of your pillow form into account when deciding ease.

Each of the two back panels should be the same width as the front panel, but should be only about 2/3 of the length. The exactness of this measure isn’t terribly important, so I approximated, since 3 does not go neatly into 16. For my 16″x16″ pillow, then, each of my back panels are 11″x17.5″.

Step 2: Sew bias tape to the envelope edges of the back panels.

Sew bias tape across one width side of each of the back panel pieces, encasing the raw edge of each. These will be the edges that overlap to create the envelope closure.

Step 3: Sew the back panels to the front panel.

Whichever back panel piece you pin to the front panel first will be the outer panel once you’ve turned your finished pillowcase right sides out. I want my top panel on the outside, so I’m pinning it to my front panel first. Pin the panels right sides together.

Don’t start sewing yet! Instead, next pin the second back panel piece flush with the opposite end of the front panel, right sides together. Visually check the overlap of the envelope back to make sure you like it, and to make sure that the bias tape sides are at the overlap, NOT the far edges.

NOW you can sew!

Using a .5″ seam allowance, sew all the way around the pillowcase, sewing both back panels to the front panel. Backstitch over both ends of the overlap to reinforce them, since they’ll be pulled on whenever you change your pillowcase.

My favorite part of sewing this pillowcase is that I don’t have to leave a hole for turning, fuss with attaching a zipper, etc. It’s so quick and easy!

Clip the corners, turn right side out, press it smooth, and pop it on a pillow!

As you can see, you can do a lot of cute things with that front panel. Here, I appliqued the logo of my kid’s college onto the front panel fabric, but I’ve also pieced and quilted pillowcase fronts, and once I even used fabric markers to illustrate one. The possibilities are endless!

What are you going to put on the front of YOUR pillow?

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Because Protesting a Fascist Government Is No Fun If Your Ears Are Cold

Or, I dunno, I just wanted to make a couple of hats.

I don't have a lot of fleece left in my fabric stash, because it picks up pet hair like CRAZY and is therefore unsuited to a home like mine, ahem, but I learned a new method of making fleece hats that are rounder, and therefore more comfortable, than the method I've previously used, so by digging through every piece of fabric I own I was able to scrounge up juuuuust enough fleece to make two new hats for my college kids.

But what I really wanted to experiment with regarding these hats is figuring out how to embellish them with fleece-on-fleece applique!

Thanks to my Cricut, cutting out the fleece applique was actually the easiest part:

That line of fuzz below the letters is where the sheet of fleece slightly overlapped the transfer tape. Without that tape, that whole section of mat would look like that!

I also recently learned that the secret trick to cutting fabric--especially fleece and felt!--without ruining your cutting mat with fuzz is to use cheap transfer tape. It's essentially a giant roll of Scotch tape, and it's meant for use with vinyl, but if you put it smooth side down on the mat and burnish the fabric onto the sticky side, it works a treat at holding the fabric perfectly for the cuts, then you can peel it off and everything stays tidy and clean!

So tidy:

Fleece-on-fleece is the easiest applique in the world to glue baste, because it will stick forever with just a glue stick, but it is the worst applique in the world to figure out how to actually, you know, SEW IT. It's got enough loft that stitches really show, and it's slightly stretchy, so you always have to worry about everything staying un-wonkified. Its saving grace is that it doesn't fray, so at least you don't have to satin stitch the damn thing, but I tried two different methods on two different hats, and I'm not happy with either of them.

I tried a simple zigzag on the little kid's hat, and honestly I thought this was going to turn out great--

--but I do not love the result:

It would be fine if the stitches didn't have so much... dimensionality? I guess? But at least it's consistent, so I can pretend that it was a design choice!

I hand-stitched the big kid's hat with a running stitch, and although I still don't love it--and I don't love how long it took--I actually like the end result a LOT better:

The stitches still show some depth, but hand-stitching allowed me to adjust the thread tension enough to keep it a bit at bay, at least, and if nothing else, the running stitch means that there are far fewer stitches involved.

At least the back side of all that stitching gets well hidden inside the fleece hat sandwich:

This four-corners business is what I wanted to try. I think it looks stupid with all the corners poked out, but if you keep the corners tucked in--

--I think the hat looks super cute, and it DOES fit very comfortably!

Two hats and one snowstorm later--

--and the kids' Valentine's Day care packages, complete with snuggly warm hats to wear to all the various and sundry protests that college students attend (college students attend a LOT of protests!) were ready to mail!

The secret trick to college student care packages?

Snacks. Lots and lots of snacks.

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