Pillows

It is impossible to write this post without mentioning the Canterbury earthquake - the loss and trauma of the event has rocked the country. Still up here where I live, it could be another world - life carries on as usual and yet for so many life will never be the same again. My thoughts are with all effected.

I have to admit I was somewhat preoccupied by the events of this week and other personal disappointments which meant sewing wise it was not a particularly productive week. I managed to crank out two pillows and you would think I was making a wedding dress of silk chiffon with all the headache it caused me. Over pillows. Yes, pillows. (the piping, getting the measurements right, the single lapped zippers etc)

Pillow inners from the Sally Army, fabric from the Red Cross and zippers from St Vincent de Paul. That makes the whole thing not just thrifted, but worthily thrifted.

A little embroidery stitching..




I have never shown these pillows on the blog, but they are also wholesome charity shop creations. I used an old blanket and various bric a brac picked up on my op shop travels - a framed embroidered picture, now framed with piping, a piece of fillet crochet, some old buttons, some scraps of upholstery fabric.



Accumluating these 'treasures' takes a lot of rummaging. For every successful trip to the op shop, I would leave 5 times empty handed. It also takes a bit of faith - can this 65 cm red jacket zipper really be used somehow, somewhere - after all, I don't want to turn my own home into a vestibule for the detritus that lines most charity shops.

And yes, the things I end up with are absolute bargains. Each pillow cost $4 to make (US $3) and there will be enough fabric leftover to make a couple of shopping bags which I'll probably stash away as gifts to give my son's teachers at preschool. Last year I gave them each a box of chocolates and a card that read, "here's 2 kgs for Christmas."

My obsession with thrifting bargains is in part genetic but also I must confess I love the thrill of the chase - the opportunity to realise something quite new and unexpected from such unpromising beginnings. It's a lot of fun, even when you do end up unpicking and resewing over a stupid zipper.

Left over love cushions

Left over love cushion tutorial

materials:

• bitch fabric   

1. anything that frays easily and will get trapped in your feed-dog, or will fray outside the scant 6 mm (1/4 inch) seam allowance.
2. anything silky that is cut on the bias
3. anything that moves a lot when you cut it out.  To test, cut a small square, and hold up. Does it still look like a square ? 
4. anything which is followed by the words crepe, georgette, satin or charmeuse  
5. anything sheer so you have to sew a separate inner
6. you can make your own bitch fabric by taking a nice easy piece of fabric and adding piping to the edges without a piping foot

Method:

Sew, cussing as you try to ease the circles into the gusset. 

I had the worst afternoon of sewing ever to try to sew these cushions. "Lumpy Love" got finished, and actually looks very nice on on the spare bed with the other dressed cushions.

The second one, the one with the white and brown slub so perfect for my "Ralph" cushion was the biggest nightmare of my sewing career. Yes really. Oh except the fabric and stuffing cost me nothing. Plenty of insult, but no real injury.

I made some piping for the cushion which stretched so badly that it shrunk the outer cushion by 3 inches when I attached it. I cut the bottom down accordingly and sewed, unpicked, sewed, unpicked, sewed, unpicked still couldn't get it to fit the gusset. Finally it did but it was smaller than the top piece so it made a big fat ice-cream cone cushion. I would show you a photo but I still have some pride.

 

Thank you for all your suggestions for the rest of my leftovers, which I will implement as soon as I can bare to look at another scrap. 

So it's back to Vogue 1051 the famed "64 step Alice + Olivia pant", real thing. 

I could be gone some time. 

Nanna cushions.

I absolutely fully accept that my style is less retro, more fashion backward, and to celebrate that I have designed and created these 2 pillows: "the Nanna cushion" and "the Nanna tiki knits."   

Well the Internet is a big wide space and there's plenty of space for everyone and every taste. As if to prove it, yesterday I came across a blog site whose sole raison d'etre is to sew bags out of old jeans and decorate then with tatting. Don't believe me? Look here. 

I lOVE other people's blogs. The creativity! It is so inspiring to see the endless variety of tastes and self expression. 

I designed these cushions to use up my fabric scraps. When I cleaned out my hope chest, I bagged up my fabric scraps and quicker than you could say "landfill" I knew I had to find a way to repurpose them. The first cushion, the knitting tiki, I made a while back to use up some furnishing fabric. If you are not from New Zealand, you may not know that the tiki is a Maori emblem used to guard the entrance to sacred places. And what place more sacred than the entrance to a sewer's sewing space? 

The second cushion is only half complete. It is made from bitch fabric (silk chiffon, it slides everywhere). I looked everywhere for a pattern for those round old cushions with the gathered centre and tufted buttons but to no avail. I sat down yesterday and drafted one from scratch, so you could say I'm still mid-muslin. As soon as it's finished and I've ironed out any construction/drafting issues I'll run a tutorial. 

Who knows? If 10 people can sign up for a group blog to turn their jeans into bags with tatting embellishment then there will probably be other sewers out there who'd like to make a tufted cushion from their fabric scraps.

How do you use your fabric scraps? Any ideas, links etc gratefully received.