Quilt as you go Log Cabin Pillow Cover

started with our log cabin style pillow cover we are going to have a thirteen and a half inch square piece of usable fleece I've got the bumpy side up and the bumpy side has the glue on it so we want to make sure that that's the side that we are attaching the fabric and then I just have a big pile of two inch strips so I'm using strips off the bolt so my pieces are all 44 to 45 inches wide but this is a great project to use just scraps things that you have leftover from other projects it's a really good scrap buster so if you are going that route then you just need to cut pieces that are two inches wide honestly you could use other widths as well but we're gonna stick on this project with everything is 2 inches wide and then just various lengths so if you are making this project in my class you'll probably want to refer to the scoring guide to see if there are any requirements related to the color scheme that you use I'm doing this kind of analogous color scheme with blues and greens so colors that are next to each other on the color wheel and it's likely that in class you will have to do something like that also if you were making this project just for fun you could do whatever color scheme you would like one of the things you do want to think about is with this design with the log cabin you're gonna start with small pieces in the middle so you'd have like a small piece here and then you'd have a little bit bigger piece on all sides and then a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger so if you are using scrap pieces to create your log cabin you'll want to start with your smallest pieces the pieces that you don't have as much of in the center of the pillow and then if you have like longer pieces especially if you have something that are at least thirteen and a half inches long then you can save those for that outer edge which you'll need the longest sections depending on the circumstances that you're making this pillow it's possible that you have an embroidery machine so you could do kind of embroidered piece maybe with your monogram or something in the middle square the center of it that you build your log cabin around or another option you have would be something like this this would be representing a fussy cut fussy cutting is sometimes done in quilting when you have a specific design that you want to showcase on your piece so instead of just cutting the piece and sewing it down randomly you select one section of the piece that you want to showcase so in this example would be this little giraffe print so if I wanted to do a fussy cut I could trim out around the giraffe or around whatever shape it is that I want to have centered leaving room for a quarter inch seam allowance on all sides and then that would be what my design is built around for today's project I'm not gonna do any fussy cutting I'm just gonna start with the center piece and build around that but these are just some options that you could have if you're making this again alright I'm going to find the direct center of my square so first I'm just gonna fold it in half and then I'm gonna fold it in half again and then just mark the point here we'll see if it made a crease big enough for me to see it on the inside or where I'm going to and it did so I'm just gonna put a little mark right there and it doesn't have to be exact because if you get close enough it'll look just fine and but what I'm gonna want to do is I'm gonna want to start out with my first piece so I'm going to just kind of fold it just to eyeball it to lay it down where the crease would touch that dot that I just made and then I'm gonna open it up so that's where my first piece is going to go down and then I need to pick what my next piece is that I'm going to have sewn on top of that so again you might have some scraps it's kind of a good idea to have a cutting utensil of some sort some nice sharp shears or I have my rotary cutter I'm gonna cut this first piece the same exact size as that one okay and we'll only do this on the first row but now I just need to lay these two pieces right sides together and I'm gonna do a quarter-inch seam across one side for the machines in our classroom you'll want your sewing machine on it to where your needle is centered and we're just gonna do a quarter inch seam allowance I'm gonna reduce my stitch link down to a two and I'm not going to need to back stitch okay so we have our first piece on here and what it'll look like just like that and then we'll be able to open it up and finger press it down okay so quarter-inch seam open it up finger press it down all right so next we need to decide which piece we're gonna put down next and so there's so many options that you can choose from I've decided to go with this kind of navy blue feather and so basically what I need to do is just kind of lay it down where it's going to go and I'm just gonna use my shears to cut it about the same length I can always trim it up more later and then all I get right sides together right there and then I'll head back to the machine do a quarter inch seam right across there one thing you'll want to do as you go is just kind of keep up with trimming your threads and making sure that any of your excess fabric that was hanging off over the edge it's trimmed up so that they're nice and even I've already trimmed that up you may also want to flip it over to the back and go ahead and trim up any long threads that you have and just do that along the way it'll keep things a lot nicer and neater the next thing that we're gonna do is decide what pieces to go on next I've already kind of decided on my pattern and so here's an option for you so as I open this up I'm gonna look at this as my Center where basically when you do a log-cabin you have your centers square or mine's a rectangle your center piece and you're gonna build your pieces around it like that so I started with the short side then my next piece has to cover those two pieces now my next piece is gonna go across this way and it's gonna cover these these two pieces what I've decided I'm going to do is for the first the first frame around that Center block I am going to do like a mirror of what's on the other side so for this particular row I'm gonna do this fabric again okay so what I'll do then is I'll just lay that piece down and now if you're not good at like just coming in here and trimming your piece down to make it the right size you could always take a marker like a fabric marker or a marking pencil and go in after you finger press those pieces down you can kind of go in with a marker there and maybe you're more comfortable doing that okay so I could then go in here and just trim that piece then lay it down and now I'm ready to go do my quarter inch seam so we just sewed the quarter inch seam along here now I'll open this up finger press it down and you do want to try to make sure that it is completely smooth no bumps or any lovely areas and so now I'm gonna look at this pattern here and it's gonna go across this side over there so again I'm gonna lay that down with even with the edges and then trim it even okay and then I'm gonna go sew a quarter inch seam right across there so I trimmed into that a little bit that'll be okay it'll all get covered up all right so we just did this one now that completes that first full phase okay so now you kind of decide on what you want to do next typically what you would do is you'd go back to where your starting point was so I started with this Center block and then this was my very first piece so now when I go with my next row around that will be my starting point again so I'm gonna take these this piece and lay it right sides together along this edge trim that piece up okay and then I'll be ready to go do a quarter-inch seam right along that now we will just continue to repeat the process until the entire block is filled all the way out to the edge you so you have now finished the cover of the cool teen of the cover and we just want to press it really really well and remember you had started out with that fusible fleece so there's gonna be that glue that can now adhere to the back of the fabric you need a really hot iron to do this steam helps also so we'll get it press down really well and then we'll flip the block over and we're gonna trim up square up all of the sides even with that original batting that we had cut making sure that we end up with a thirteen and a half inch square we need to have a thirteen and a half inch square in order to fit the 13 inch pillow form that we made in class if you're making this project for something else you could start with any other size pillow form that you already have I like to take pillow forms that I've already used for a while and take the cover off and just put a new cover on it so you could do the same technique using any size pillow that you need and so the trick is whenever you are covering the pillow if you had a 15 inch form you'll start with a 15 inch square on the front get a 16 inch form 16 inch square so the math on that is really easy then we'll see in just a minute how to make the back for the cover as well so it just it's a pretty easy project that you can replace pillow covers all year round do seasonal ones for different holidays that type of thing okay so this looks pretty well pressed and now we can head over to trim up the edges and square it up alright so first of all you can just sit and admire all of your work it looks so awesome looks so cute but then you'll want to flip it over to the back side and you can just use that edge of your batting piece as your guideline now if I were doing this for myself I would take my quilting ruler and I'd use my rotary blade and I'd slice that off really fast but I don't want to do that for everybody in class if you're doing this at home or on your own that's how I would suggest doing it but for school purposes you'll just stand at your table and take your nice sharp shears and trim off any excess fabric you have up to the edge of the fleece and then just trim that off square it up all the way around on all four sides now you're ready to make the backside of the cover one thing I want to show you here is like right there there's less than eighth of an inch of the fleece still showing you do not need to sew an extra piece on to cover that up but if you still had a pretty wide amount let's see if I could get like if you had this much still showing you might want to go ahead and add another piece there but because that would all be covered up by your seam you don't need to cover it all right to make the back of the cover you're gonna have two pieces of fabric that are even with the width of the front so this piece right here is 10 inches by 13 and a half inches and this one is 8 inches by 8 inches this way by ten and a half so they're even going across there just to different heights what you need to do is flip the fabric over so that the wrong side is facing up you're gonna set your seam gauge to a 3/8 okay so that's the third line over on your seam gauge you will fold the one of the 14-inch sides over 3/8 so 3/8 and then we're doing a double turn him so I'm gonna turn it over one time 3/8 and then I turn it again 3/8 just press that down and then just to hold it what in the meantime till I'm ready I'm gonna put a few pins in I'm gonna put the pins in perpendicular to the edge that I'm going to be sewing sew the edge I'm gonna be selling is right along this opening okay so I want to put my pin heads on that side okay then I'll set that aside and I'll repeat the same thing on my 8 by 13 and 1/2 inch piece I kept saying 14 but it should be this is 13 and 1/2 inch that was the size of my finished pillow okay all right to do our top stitch I've got my machine still on a - you will see this stitch from the outside of your project so you may want to take into consideration your thread color I've just got this light blue and it corresponds well with my color scheme so because I have my machine on a - I'm gonna line the fold up with this little opening this little groove it's like a split so there's a metal piece there's a split and then a plastic section of your presser foot my fabric is gonna line up with the split and if you need to know precisely where on this split to line it up just line it up where the plastic begins okay so I'm gonna go ahead and lower my needle lower my presser foot and just as I stitch along that edge I'm gonna keep an eye on this area right here okay so I want to keep it lined up okay just to show you where that is so here's the folded edge it's down about an eighth of an inch from that edge just showing you that if you happen to sew way up here you're gonna need to go back and sew down along the lower edge basically what that's doing is keeping it held in place repeat the process for the top stitch along your second piece just as you did on the previous one you're gonna take your finished piece and you have to decide what do you want the top and bottom to be or top and bottom I'm just gonna keep mine with the way that it was the whole time it really doesn't matter you can turn your pillow whichever way but these pieces are gonna go on in a particular direction so I'm gonna start with my larger piece and you should have that piece should line up across the width of the pillow and then and we're doing this right sides together so the bold side of the fabric is touching the top of the front of the cover and now I'm going to have my second piece and I've got that folded edge okay it's gonna overlap with the other folded edge I made and we are going to line it up and then we're gonna pin all the way around now this is kind of different from the pillow form that you made when you made the pillow form you had to leave an opening so that you could flip the pillow inside out well for this project this is the opening we'll be able to stuff that whole pillow down inside of that space okay so you don't have to leave an opening you're gonna pin all the way around and then you're gonna do a quarter inch seam all the way around the entire cover just to show you I do have pins going in all the way around and this I am NOT going to pivot at my corners I'm just gonna start at one end so 1/4 of an inch seam to the other end and I'll do another seam from this end up and I'll repeat that on all sides alright so we've just stitched a quarter inch on all sides I want you to flip it over to the back side where you can see your stitch lines just go in and make sure if you are sewing with the top or the poke like I had the polka dots up while I was sewing I just want to look for my stitch line to make sure that I caught all of that batting what will happen sometimes is especially in class if you're not as experienced with sewing you might end up sewing off the edge over here and then when you flip your pillow inside out you'd end up with a hole alright the next thing we need to do is we need to clip the corners I'm just going to do this straight across the clip I just want to make sure I don't cut into my actual corner seam but I'm just gonna cut off a little triangle point on all four corners this will help me when I flip it inside out it'll help me be able to press it easier and make it just have a nicer sharper corner alright so now you can go ahead and take that opening there you're just gonna flip the cover so that the right side is out okay flip this bottom half down alright and then you can use your finger first just to poke out the corners you want them to be as pointed as possible when that doesn't work I usually have a metal loop turner in my classroom that I use or you can close your sheers so you don't want them open where they're sharp but close them up and then you can stick those inside to poke out your corner and do that on all four sides then you're gonna head over and press it once those are all taken care of you

Channel: Lexy Mcnew

Views: 113,438

Rating: 4.8068967 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt as you go, Log Cabin Pillow Cover, Envelope Cover, Beginner Sewing Project

Id: zSnfXLhJRiM

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2017