Time to mix things up

On Friday, I finished up work a little early and thought about taking a nap on the couch before picking up the kids from the bus stop. As I approached the couch, however, I noticed the throw cushion covers. “I am getting tired of these,” I thought. This makes sense because we have had them since we moved in to this house in 2009.

So, instead of taking a nap, I looked over at the pile of scraps from the quilt top I’ve been working on and decided that they would make good cushion covers. Then I got to work.

I had actually considered making cushion covers a few months ago and had bought some zippers, and I also had lots of batting scraps leftover from previous projects. Everything I’d need for a weekend project. I found a tutorial on zippered quilted pillow covers over on Suzy Quilts and realized that I should have quilted the pieced pillow cover that I made for my mom last spring… no wonder it came apart. I also found a tutorial for an economy block and started with that. I love Amy Smart’s site, I’ve learned so much about quilting from her.

I should have just started with one and went through the whole process, but I really wanted to get rid of all four of the 1234, so I did four at a time. I made a block with my favorite star, another with HSTs, and another that just stretched my scraps as far as they’d go.

I had fun quilting these, it seemed like a good opportunity to practice some FMQ. I tried some spirals, leaf motifs, and little flowers. Also some echo quilting on the star.

On Saturday night, I fell asleep in my kids’ bed and woke up at 11pm (I should have taken that nap!). Whenever I do this, which is often, I feel like I have missed out on my key 3 hours of alone time for quilting and am disappointed. I had some energy last night after my nap, so instead of going back to bed, I turned on the lights and attached the zipper foot.

As I got started, I realized that some of the blocks I made were a little too big to handle the Suzy Quilts recommended 1/2 inch seam allowance for pillowcases without cutting off the design (or making the cover too small for the insert). I should have planned a little better. In some cases, I tried to do a smaller seam allowance and some of the batting is showing where the zipper goes. Sew and learn, sew and learn.

I finished these around 1:45am, and today I got to nap with them (along with Amanda’s dog Wallace, he spent the night with us while Amanda and her family were away). It was a good nap.

Now that I’ve got the hang of doing zippered pillow covers, hopefully I will change these out before another 12 years go by…

When I finally finish my fall-ish quilt for my bedroom, I’ll have these coordinating pillow covers, which is kind of neat. I’m going to become one of those people with 300 pillows on my bed, can’t wait!