sewing: complete!

Happy Saturday, everyone! After a bit of a crafting break while I tried to find backing fabric for my patchworked throw pillow front, I sat down to my sewing machine and managed to put together an actual, legitimately useful pillowcase!

I thought I’d bookmarked the tutorial I used to figure out how to make the back, but apparently I did not. It’s a pretty idiotproof envelope-style pillowcase – my front was 17″ square, so I cut two 17″ by 10″ pieces out of my backing fabric and sewed them so that they overlapped. (As it turns out, I could have made these pieces a little bit wider – maybe 17″ by 12″ or so – but such is life.) My 16″ pillow form fits inside very nicely, if a teeny bit snugly.

See what I mean? I think I might put on a button. (Or, I could just make sure the back is never facing out, and call it a win. That sounds like more fun.)

I’m super, super proud of myself for making this and finishing it and having it be something useful. It really, really makes me think that I can (and probably will) sew more, because apparently not being able to sew or cut in a straight line does not need to hold me back from making cool stuff.

triangles upon triangles.

I’ve always sort of admired quilting from afar – in the same way the kid on the outskirts of the playground admires the kids playing inside, wishing they could join. I read a fair few of craft blogs, and I love when amazing quilted or patchwork projects come up on Bloglines so that I can sigh and say “Yeah. Those do look nice.”

I even started collecting little scraps of fabric, here and there – including this utterly amazing cowgirl fabric – just in case, but I never really felt like it was something I was going to get into, it just felt too intimidating. And then Whip Up declared that April was mini-quilt month, and something clicked in my brain. Mini. Quilts. It honestly had never occurred to me until then that it might be possible to do adorable patchwork stuff, but small-scale.

So I did some pondering, and then some sketching, and then some cutting, and now I have roughly 10248140 little triangles sitting to the right of me, and a huge stack of notes to the left, related to my latest exam. I’m handstitching the triangles together, because I’m scared of doing anything on my machine that is not a straight line at a right angle, and it’s way more relaxing than I thought it would be to find a spare ten minutes and be able to sew two little triangles and feel like I’ve accomplished something.

I’m turning the triangles into squares. The squares are going to be a bigger square, and that’s going to be a pillowcase – I’m trying to do it in a way that’ll showcase my cowgirl fabric, if I can.

(This is not to say that I like my knitting any less. Really, the only reason it even occurred to me to start sewing is that I’m currently waiting for yarn to arrive, as I have fallen in love with the Goose Rocks cardigan from the latest Twist Collective and require one of my very own. Still, it’s nice to have variety.)

relatedly, i am a champion of the universe

This weekend is shaping up to be very disorienting. The weather here has been gorgeous – as in, perfect-midsummer-temperatures-gorgeous, and I want nothing more than to fish my sundresses out of the back of my closet and run around outside. (Well, not really – I want to sit on a patio outside drinking beer, but close enough.) Unfortunately, what I actually have to be doing is learning this.

With the help of a lot of this.

Oh, right. And I may or may not have finished something sweater-shaped that totally fits and is awesome. Maybe, if the weather ever cools off again, I’ll get a chance to wear it around, and take some better photos.