Standing up

Hello everyone!  How was your week?  Thanks to everyone wished our kids well in their new home.  Thanks also for your concerns about the cat.  Don't worry about him--I understand he now rules the household.  He even has his own condo so he can see out the window, so I think he actually got a happy ending.

It has been very, very busy here.  We are doing some home improvements, which makes a horrible mess, and are trying to get ready to go to a wedding and a small vacation several states away.  I bought a dress, but like all dresses I buy, I had to alter it.  The top and bottom never fit the same way.  (What is with the giant armholes?) If you've ever done this, you know that it is not fun sewing, but is very time consuming.  At least it fits correctly now. 

I also carved out a little bit of time to make this:

This is a tablet stand pillow, made from this tutorial at From Pixels to Patchwork. This is a very cute blog with a lot of great tutorials and really good ideas!  The tutorial for this pillow stand is great, with terrific pictures and easy to follow directions. 

I used a fat eighth pack (each fabric is 9 by 22) of fabrics from the Lady Slipper Lodge line from Moda.  These are so pretty!  I didn't use anywhere near all the fabric in the pack, and I tried to mix a bunch of the prints so that the pillow would be more interesting.

My new Olfa Frosted ruler!  I truly love this thing!

I made a few adjustments to the pattern for myself.  First, instead of using interfacing, I used a bit of fusible batting.  Where else would I use it, really? I didn't quilt it, but now I wish I had.  Here's a tip for using the fusible stuff--if you use a Teflon pressing sheet, you can just lay the fabric pieces on the batting, fuse it, and then cut without having to cut shapes before fusing.  It's so much easier that way.

Using my emergency backup iron.  I think the good iron has finally died.

The tutorial gives directions for stitching the triangle sides that include pivoting at the end of the seams.  Instead of doing this, I felt like I had better control by stitching the bottom seam first, then pinning and stitching the side seams.  My points probably aren't as pointy as they could have been, but I think the stitching went a lot better for me. 

That is one ugly lunch bag.

Also, I had very little Polyfil and didn't want to buy more, and I wasn't going to use beads, so I used quilt batting.  For the tablet "shelf" I just stacked about 6 layers and rolled them tightly:

This piece got stitched between the layers of fabric in the shelf, which was the most difficult part of the whole project.  Make use of your zipper foot to stitch that seam!  Also, I didn't realize that the stitching would show, so make sure your thread matches the shelf fabric, if that matters to you. 

To stuff the main pillow, I used all the little pieces of batting that I had.  You know, all those skinny pieces that you cut off the sides and then don't know what to do with because you don't want to sew them together?  Use them to stuff pillows!

Nom, nom, nom!

This worked great.  The pillow took a lot more of these bits than I thought it would, but it ended up stuffed quite firmly.  From now on, I'll save these pieces in a bag to use just for this purpose.

I am really happy with the finished product, and it fits my tablet really well! For size purposes, this is a 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet.

This whole project took about an hour and a half--half an hour or so to cut and fuse, and then about an hour to stitch and stuff.  If I were going to make it again, I would leave out the zipper on the bottom and just leave that seam (or another one) open a bit for turning and stuffing, then close it by hand.  The zipper seems unnecessary to me.  Also, I would extend the tablet shelf a bit so that it goes all the way across the front.  There's nothing wrong with it as is, but  I think it would look better if it were longer.

I plan to use this to watch movies all over the house, not just in the sewing room, but here's a sewing room-specific use for it:

If you look carefully, you can see some of the stitching for the fabric shelf.  I wish I had done this differently.

Pin a pattern to it to keep it right in front of you!  I can't wait to try this!

That's my big finish for the week, and I think I need to go test it right now by laying on the sofa and watching a movie.  I suggest you do this too and call it research for a new sewing project. (Seriously, it's not like this will actually happen, but doesn't it sound like a great idea?)

Thanks to Taryn for a great tutorial, and I hope everyone has a great weekend.  Have fun with your "research" and happy sewing!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and also Finish it up Friday. Stop over and say hi!

Small projects

Hi all! I am feeling somewhat better today, although there was a lot of downtime this week. I even stayed home all day Wednesday and accomplished almost nothing all day. My pedometer says I had only 1855 steps for that day, when I usually have close to 10,000. I guess that's what happens when you take medicine and curl up on the couch reading quilting blogs instead of actually doing something.

I did manage to sew up two small projects this week, mainly so I could feel like I hadn't wasted all that time. The first involves the tote bag I showed you last time:

The hubs has a bad back and the seats they put in cars aren't really comfortable for him any more, even though they're advertised as having lumbar support. So we have driving pillows specifically sized and stuffed to fit behind him in the car so we can drive long distances in comfort. One of these met a tragic end a little while ago, involving the seat belt, the latches on the car door, and a person in a big hurry. So this fairly useless but cheerful tote bag has become our new car pillow.

This was a very simple project. I just turned the bag inside out and folded the bottom up to trace the curve at the top. Then I cut off the top and stitched just around the curves to hold the corners, leaving an opening for stuffing. Then I took a nap because that wore me out.

When I woke up, I stuffed it firmly, using almost the whole bag of fiberfill:

Stitched the opening closed and ta da! Finished back pillow.

Total time commitment, including hand stitching the opening closed: less than 45 minutes. (Sadly, not all in one sitting.)

I'm counting this as my orange project for the week, along with this similarly cheerful bright orange block (which  actually finished last week and forgot):

Gosh, orange is such a happy color. I should use it more.

The other thing I did this week was this little row quilt, which I plan to hang as a banner in a small space:

 

Hard to get a good picture of a long skinny quilt. It measures about 12 by 41. This was a row quilt pattern from a shop in Pennsylvania from 2013. I had made the components a little bit ago and finally put them together this week, then added the small borders to finish it off. Took about two Netflix episodes of Scandal to put it together. It's an unusual block, and I think it turned out well. I may quilt it up this weekend if I have some time.

That's it from here! Hope you all were feeling well and got a whole lot done this week. Enjoy your weekend!

Linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF, and SoScrappy. Stop by for some quilty inspiration!