Steps to Making a Door Pillow x 60!

AKA : Procrastination 101.... Take Pictures and Blog About It to Avoid Doing It!

Pre- Pillow Construction:

Create 2 versions of the pattern, one for each machine

Pre- cut all fabric and ribbon

Steps to Sewing:
1.Hoop Lining Fabric

2. Sew pillow fabric down to lining fabric/ stop machine

 3. Place and sew yellow felt down (1st appliqué) / stop machine

4. Trim felt to stitch line

6 Load onto 2nd machine and let it stitch checkered outline and butterfly placement 


Somewhere along the line, the machine stops on its own 2 or 3 times and demands attention!  (broken thread, cutter not working, WHATEVER)

7. Stop machine and change it over to the other machine.

8 Stitch green down and inside wings (10 mins) ...stop machine

9. Cut around butterfly

10. Load back into machine 2 and stitch body of butterfly/ stop machine

11.  Add back fabric and stitch.

12. Trim around pillow

13. Turn pillow right side out.

14. Pin ribbons into holes

15. Stitch 1/8"  around the outside edge leaving opening undone.  This is an extra step, but it allows us to machine stitch the hole left for stuffing later, instead of having to hand-stitch it...

16. Stuff

17. Stitch closed

18 Add bling

REPEAT... 59 more times!!!




The moral of this story:
I'm NOT CHARGING ENOUGH!!!!

How to Make SHARP Corners on Pillows

AKA... Old Dog - New Trick!


Work began today on making 60 door pillows for the Pastor's Wives Dinner at next month's conference.  This was a HAPPY surprise order but boy WHAT have I gotten myself into?!


This is the final product:

I designed it using a modified version of the weekend logo:

I will show more pictures of the process later, now I want to show you something I just learned tonight!  

My friend Andrea came over to give me a hand with the final steps of the pillow...the turning, stuffing, stitching closed part.    

The very first words out of her mouth were, "No you did this wrong" 

!  !  !  !  !  !  !  !  !

"WHAT?!!!  Hey!  I'm the one with 4 years of high school Home Ec. and 4 years of college Home Ec.  I have a TEACHING DEGREE IN HOME EC!!!  What do you mean I did it wrong!?!"

This is how we were taught to make a good corner:  

DON'T DO IT THIS WAY!

Trim all seams to 1/4", taper at the corners, cut across the corner then turn and push it out with a pointed something.  ..Kinda like this:...only I haven't trimmed the seams here...just angled to the point then cut across.

WRONG!!!  And she proved it to me!  I was shocked! 

How to do it correctly:

1.  All seams should be about .5"... do not taper or cut across the corner!

2. Stick your pointer finger inside the corner before turning

3. Fold the side seam in toward the pillow and hold with your thumb and the finger that is still inside the pillow

4. Fold the top seam down over the side seam and hold 

5. With both fingers still "together", pull the corner through the hole you left for turning... The point will be PERFECT without poking anything into it!

6. Continue these steps until all four corners are turned.


Oh!  I also found out tonight that Andrea's mother owned a Professional Pillow Making Business so Andrea made pillows for years!!!!


She wins....


Pin It

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PASSWORD ALERT!

Oh MY GOODNESS! Oh MY GOODNESS!!!  I now have a new obsession!  I have been on the ColourLovers site since I got up this morning!  It all started when I woke up with this idea for a pattern.  I call it "Broken Hearts Club"  get it?  I know...CORNY!!!

Anyway, something I thought about yesterday, as I was signing up for one of these "free tools", was that I needed to be careful with the passwords.  The thought occurred to me that I, like most folks I expect, tend to use the same username and password on as many sites as I can, just so I can remember them...there are just so many to remember!  And then I thought, that all these "free" sites could, if they wanted to, go to sites like PayPal and test the username/password combinations we so freely give them.  BAM!  They have us!  

So, the moral of that story is: CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS!!!  I started making the password something like "stripes" if it a package to create stripes... or some other key phrase for that site.

OK, I'm off to find some lunch...it is 2:45 here and I haven't eaten today!  HUNGRY!

Patterns To Color

You know, there is absolutely no reason to buy any digital background anymore!  There is a way to make it yourself, with just a few clicks, somewhere "out there" on the web...there's a place to make plaid (see yesterday), stripes, and today I found THE background site!  OH MERCY!  I have been there for the last EIGHT HOURS!!! It is www.ColourLovers.com .   WARNING!  Once you get there you may not be able to leave!

There are almost 17,000 patterns already and you can make your own!  The first three below were there already,  I just chose the colors (the pattern determines what will be the same color) and notice, once you color, you name the pattern/color combination

I created the next pattern myself, and colored it twice. Now that I have created the pattern it is out there for anyone else to color.  It took a while to figure out how to create an original pattern and I THINK you are limited to the little clip art (like the daisy shape) that they provide so it looks kind of "cookie cutter" but this is yet another challenge... how to make a pattern like the ones above ....for another day.

Same thing only different

OR...your third option is to just download any already created and colored pattern on the site!  They are there for the taking, FREE!

OH! OH!  And get this!  They are partnered with a company , called Spoonflower, that will make your design into a piece of fabric!  How cool is that!

In Action:

Make Mine Plaid

Hi All!
Where did today go?!!!  It has been one of those jumpin' around can't get a real focus kind of days... My last task has been to find a long lost remote control to my TV so that I can get my Roku to work.... ARGH!!!  Still no luck so I'll have to continue that nasty task.... there's just so many places it can be, ya know?


ANYWAY, before all that I decided to play with Tartan Designer for a while.  It is a place to make FREE plaid...kinda cool.


I made one then decided what I could do with it...I came up with a FREE download for you.  It was 7 pages long so I had to upload it to the web as a .pdf file.  Here is one of the pages so you can decide if you even want to bother with it:

 If you want the whole alphabet you can get it HERE

If you use them for something I would LOVE to see what you make!  Please share.  

OK, I hate to even show you the next picture because it is TERRIBLE!  The only reason I'm showing it is that I made the dumb bag just for this post... there is no real gift giving involved!  The actual bag looks kinda good, its the picture that is so awful.  but oh well....here ya go....something I made with one of the plaid letters.  It is bigger than what you are getting but the bag was big!  

My Space...aka: My sofa is here somewhere!? aka: Keeping it Real

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I like to call this the:  

"Me doing my part to make all husbands of the world appreciate their wives tour"

... Show them!  They just THOUGHT you were bad!...

*** WARNING! This tour is not for the faint of heart!  

MESSY, Real Life, AHEAD!  ***

And, NO! I am NOT a hoarder! ... don't send that show my name! ... I just LOVE tools and every color of every thing I buy, whatever it is.

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The computer room:

This is a picture of my computer keyboard/mouse area... SEE I TOLD YOU I have no mouse space!     

And, this is just the side of the room I was willing to show you!  You can see that my vinyl cutter takes up more than it's share of my desk!

Now, let's move on, to the die cut room....

My brother installed the slat board on three walls of this room for me, then we used the left over scrap pieces in closets and the garage....LOVE MY WALLS!   It is sold by the panel, just look under "store displays" in your local yellow pages.  He also installed the pre-fab "kitchen counter" from the home improvement store for me...I love my brother!

the other direction... some of my dies (I use to sell die cuts before everyone could do it themselves)

from the back side (paper, you can never have too much paper!)

You can probably tell that I LOVE, and spend a lot, on good storage...I just have a problem putting things back in "their place"

Now, to the "Can't-find-anywhere-else-to-put-it-sunroom." 

Paper cutter, spiral binder, embroidery hooper thingy and ribbon, lots of ribbon, (I have GOT to find a better way to keep the ribbon! there is just too much of it. ... See My Solution Here)  OH! and for those of you wondering about the tree in the corner.  That was a gift from some dear friends.  I mentioned that I thought it was cute and they surprised me with it a few days later.  It is a bear cub climbing a tree, not a bare Christmas tree..but a bear in a tree.

jewelry and button making stuff ... hummm...I NEED LABELS! that would at least make it appear to be more organized.

OH!  and we can't leave out the Embroidery section of the room!

Turn around and you can see my dining room... ever ready for the impromptu card making gathering.  

Just so you know, this is what I was willing to show you!  No way you are seeing behind the closed doors where everything else is!!!

OK here is one more inside a walk-in closet because it has scrap slat board...storage for my SU! stamp wheels..

The rest of the walls (and floor) are shelves of the regular stamps, once in alphabetical order. Don't let the empty shelves fool ya, that's what is in the boxes on the floor!... and more are at my feet right now being scanned and being photographed for the big sale!!! .... after all I have to make room for my "next thing"!

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My whole house may be messy but I will say this ...I haven't met a crafter yet that doesn't want to come spend a day digging to see what other treasures are buried within!  And my nieces LOVE it here!  We never have to go anywhere else for entertainment :-)

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