A shirt for Joel and pillowcases

Every summer I try to make Joel a Hawaiian style shirt. Since I’m getting good at this, I should probably make him some long sleeve shirts in the winter.I’ll admit that I found the fabric on sale at Michael Levine’s, sure it has birds and butterflies, but the colors are muted and I like the spacing on the print. I did some fussy cutting, made sure to get a lone bird on the pocket.Back view.And on the model!  He loves these shirts, I did tell him he can retire some of the shirts from 5-6 years ago…

Every month at the Modern Quilt guild, I pick up a package of pillowcases to be assembled. I really like that they go to Foster Kids. I also like making the boy patterns, because I’m sure there are less of them.This time I wised up. I have a five thread serger, which sews the seam and overlock at the same time. I don’t get a chance to use this much. Last time, I sewed the top band on my regular machine, then did the side seams with the serger. Hmm, why not just serge the whole thing? As you can see, I had some problems with the seam, the thread broke, I had to go back to my regular machine to fix it. Such mishaps occur all the time when sewing.The back side of the seam is a chain stitch, so it is really important to secure the ends, otherwise, that seam can unravel easily.So there is one step that I do with a hand sewing needle, I pull the ends back and then I secure them with Fray-check.  This is the top, I don’t want lose threads. On the bottom seam, which is inside the pillowcase, I just use fray-check.One of them is trying to escape!  So in the package, everything is cut out and ready to assemble. For the pillowcase on the left, it came with a pink strip. There is a tiny pink dot in the stars. I know boys, on pink strip and they won’t take that pillowcase. So I substituted with blue.I went into my stash and made a very girly pillowcase.Six more to donate, I think this year I have made 13 or 14 pillowcases. Each one matters.

Leah

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