Sew With Me: Envelope style pillow from adding machine tape scraps

hey guys it's me Robin our silent crafts today I am going to be making a pillow for my son Robbie who graduated this past year and I'm using his scraps left over from his shirts from a quilt I made so his pillow will match his quilts this is gonna be just a basic throw pillow he likes to have one behind his back when he's sitting in bed and stuff this fabric leftover shirt fabric I went ahead and used the calculator tape process of sewing the little scraps of his shirt on to the calculator tape paper then I just went ahead and just stitched a whole bunch on figure and bow that's about what I need I just have this a little bit left to take off so let's go ahead and take that off remember it's just easy hold your thumb before your hands wherever over by either where the thread is so you don't pull on your stitches give it a little gentle tug run your finger under it you'll find your own way of doing it it's not did you see it just pops off really easy and if you have a little piece of stock just give a gentle pull all right not only am I using the scraps from my son Robbie shirts but this is an old rug rat tommy pillow of his it has some stains on it but it's it's washed I cleaned it recently and I went ahead and I just thought it'd be nice to use an old pillow form that he had growing up and he loved as the pillow form for his pillow this pillow is 16 inches this is basically a 16 inch pillow form you measure it from seeing the scene they can be a little bit bigger based on even though the fabric itself is 16 inches depending on how well it's stuffed it could be a little bit bigger a little bit smaller so this is the pillow form and this is going to be the front of the pillow before we get to the front we're gonna be making an envelope style pillow so let me show you what I did for the back both of these fabrics were in Robbie's original quilt so I decided to go ahead and just use what scraps I had leftover to make the back of his pillow this pillow is gonna be a totally scrappy pillow and I'm going to be using everything from stash so there'll be nothing new to purchase with an envelope style pillow your back of your pillow will overlap and then you slide your pillow in through here so there's no zippers needed no buttons nothing like that now I like to have my back sturdy a lot of patterns will have you just make one layer fabric and you fold a little hem under and stitch a line down that but I like to have two layers of fabric because it makes the back of the pillow sturdier so since I have a 16 inch pillow form and with a quarter inch seams all the way around I'm going to need to start out with my finished product is gonna have to be 16 and 1/2 inches now these numbers are just for a 16 inch pillow form they're easy to adjust for a different size let's say you were making a 20 inch pillow form you're going to have a piece of fabric at the end that's going to be 20 inches so for my back I decided that I needed a piece of fabric that is 16 and 1/2 inches by 20 and a half now the way I came up with that number the way I came up with that number is my pillow form is 16 inches I'm going to have the extra half inch for seam allowance I like to have I like to have my pillow cover fit nice and snug so I didn't want to go any more than the 16 and a half some people add an inch to it but a half inch is plenty for me because I like it snug then you need to decide you need to decide for your pillow how much of an overlap you want for your envelope back for the 16 inch pillow I decided about a 4 4 and 1/4 inch overlap between the two fabrics will be plenty that gives you enough room to hold it in but if you went to 5 6 7 inches it would be hard to get the pillow in and out because this way you can take your cover off and wash it so the larger the pillow form the larger the overlap you're gonna have so if I were making a 20 inch pillow form I would probably want this overlap here to be more of a 6 inch overlap than the 4 inches so after I cut out my two identical pieces that are once again 20 and a half inches by 16 1/2 inches I folded them in half and ironed them then I just sewed a stitch down just to give it some structure and to hold this section together because there's going to be a lot of force tugging and pulling on this area of your pillow so there's our back now at the front I thought I'd have a little bit of fun I thought I would take this fabric and have it go in strips in different directions and angles on the front of the pillow because the ticker-tape I use is three and a quarter inches it's a little bit wide for me so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this strip in half so the first thing I need to do is decide where I want to put my first piece one of the things you have to consider is you don't want to put anything too close to the edge because you're going to need this seemed when you saw this blue to this because we could do this as an applique right on top but I'm going to be cutting the fabric and making it making it all one part of one fabric so what I plan on doing is I plan on cutting it instead of applique it on top what you could do and then I will have it all as one flat piece of fabric if you were to applique you can just stitch right along each side of your fabric strip or you can fold it on there depending on whether or not you want to keep a raw edge so my starting fabric is basically about 16 and 1/2 inch is this probably a little bit off square I just wanted to make sure I had enough room I know once I start cutting into this and adding fabric it's gonna get wider and then I can go ahead and trim it down which is another good reason to leave a nice section along the sides we're not going to change the height so this is going to stay at 16 and a half inches but the width is going to grow so I'm just gonna pick a piece of fabric the side I need Oh about that much I can look and see which fabrics I have and choose my piece based on that like I really like this green fabric so I could make sure I incorporate that or I can just flip over to another piece that has that fabric so since I'm cutting on the diagonal I'm gonna make sure I have some past this end and some past the top and then just lop it off keeping my main fabric out of the way I'm going to go ahead and slice this I could be very particular and make sure I get it in exactly in half or I can just slice it any way I want I think just so I can see the seams and know where they are I'm gonna flip it and cut it from the back I am just going to lay my ruler down say that looks good nice and slow and there we go I now have two strips and as you can see they're both not the same size one of them's almost 2 inches and the other one's an inch and a half but like I said I'm ok with that so then I need to decide where on my blue fabric I'm going to cut to add that piece in I could lay it out and say that looks good and it does so I'm just gonna go ahead make sure my rulers just a little bit a little bit wonky if I go too much I'm not gonna have room for too many of my other what I'm picturing these in my mind is these are like crazy birch trees for me if you ever seen a birch tree they're like black and white and the barks all in different designs and stuff like that so this is kind of a fun version of that I'm gonna go ahead and say that looks good slice it now I have to take this over to the sewing machine and what I'll do is I'll lay this piece over and also and if I'm paying attention the best way to put it through the machine is when all your seams are going down so that might be one thing to keep in mind while you're cutting and then after I have this sewn and then I'll take this piece and sew it to the colorful shirt strap to the colorful shirt scraps that's a tongue twister now you've seen me so before so I'm just gonna go ahead and take this over and sew both pieces and I'll be right back okay there it is all sewn in now I'm gonna go ahead and iron it and when I do this blue material is a little bit sturdier fabric than the t-shirt and then the dress shirt fabric so it wants to iron in this way so what I'm gonna go ahead and do is let my seams go ahead and go to this strip of shirt fabric normally with all the seams I would stitch it open but a lot of times it's nice just to let it go the way it wants plus it'll have that extra strength when we go ahead and quilt this you and there you go one little piece added now if you notice you notice all we up here at the top my blues not quite lined up with the next section of blue because I didn't go right to the end of this fabric it would have been easier to line up if I have gone straight to the end so a good tip is to maybe make your pillow front a little bit longer so if you're doing a sixteen and a half maybe go 17 and a half 18 inches so at the end when we trim the top and bottom well even it all out and then it'll be fine my next thought is do I want to use that same half of this fabric and put it into the next section or do I want to get something new now we have these two or bowles at the top I could flip it hmm that's funny because both ends have to start in the same fabric almost so if I flipped it I would still end up with some blues together so what I think I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a whole new strip and cut another piece I'm just going ahead and cut it a lot longer in between two seams than what I need make sure my good pillow tops out of the way I don't want to cut on that now if you cut it too long it'll be easy to trim later and if you cut it too short you can always just so extra pieces together and you'll be fine this time I think I'm going to go a little bit wider on the bottom and a little narrower at the tip and see how that shows up in our pillow cover see when you come hang with me while I'm trying to show you how I do things it's not necessarily a tutorial it's more of a come so with me and I'll show you how I figured out how to work some things let me just trim this piece off down at the bottom because it's flopping around and it keeps getting in my way so I'm gonna trim it past the blue and just take that little piece we'll save it for something else because while working with scrap projects once you start working with them you'll realize scrap seemed to multiply no matter how much you use you're always trimming off another piece and having more I can use that piece for a chrome quilt so this time I don't want all my trees is what I'm basically calling them leaning this way I like to have some going this way so I think do I want one the cross maybe we can have it cross over let's see what that looks like so I'm gonna slice through my pillow cover but I'm also gonna site slice through my tree up here making sure I don't go too close to that corner sometimes it gets a little scary okay so then trees are wider at the bottom than they are at the top so I want to go ahead and sew that in this way as I was sewing this piece I was all set to come over here and tell you not to cross your trees because I really thought that this section was gonna come off a whole lot longer than it is but it came out pretty good so now I need to cut for my next one this is where you get to be creative and you get to use you know whatever judgement or imagination you choose do you want all your trees to be going in the same directions you want in the cross do you want things to look all symmetrical or do you kind of fly by the seat of your pants and just let it winged so I'm taking into consideration my four corners so I need to make sure that I don't go and leave too small of a seam allowance over here so when I trim up because as it is right now my block is 17 and a quarter so we already know we're gonna need to be trimming that down to 16 and a half so I need to make sure I leave a good inch on the side I don't want to put two tree seams right next to each other so I wouldn't want to go this way or right on top of it so I need to be careful of where my trees are and where my corners are I think this guy we're gonna let another one lean this way kind of gotta go a little bit close up at the top but not too much at the bottom and then my last one I'll go ahead and let it go that way that feels good see if you so like this it's freeform sewing you can you know you make it however it works for you now I have my leftovers from my original strip then I'm just gonna go ahead and I'm gonna add it here but I'm gonna try to keep my blue a little further away from this blue so that these aren't right on top of each other I'm using a standard quarter inch seam allowance all through this as I'm stitching it I just went ahead and ironed this piece these two I sewed both sides and then ironed it so I want to see if it's a little easier to stitch if we iron it first we'll find out one more helpful tip before I go let's see if trimming this part even will make it easier to stitch down the next section so I'm just gonna go ahead and cut it even with the last section even though it's off by the first one this way it'll be a little bit longer versus shorter trim that guy off too you see I put myself a little helpful registration mark on the back and I know that that was in my upper right-hand corner so as I get this piece of fabric since it's same on both sides I don't get it all flipped around and I know exactly you could put a registration mark all across the top with chalk on the back so you don't get your pieces mixed up and then I'm just gonna go ahead now that I know that this is even I'm just gonna go ahead and stitch this together okay I think adding trimming it up at the top and ironing one side sewing sewing and then ironing and then sewing and ironing since instead of doing it all at once was very helpful so that's a very good helpful tip to do one side and iron do the other side and iron and don't do them all at the same time in the trim up the top edge as you go so it'll be easier to stitch the next pieces on now I've got room for one more piece I want to leave my inch on the side but now I want to fill in this empty space here I think I'll totally crazy and cut this way but I'm not feeling that crazy today so I think today I think I have this one going almost straight not to caddy Walker only off by a couple degrees and then go ahead and slice it through here see that piece that one's only a little bit wonky this time maybe I'll take my other half that's fat on one side and skinny on the other and this time do I like it upside down I don't think I like the fat part at the top I really think I do prefer it down at the bottom because they feel more like trees to me this way and I think if I slide it down a little then I won't have this green with this green because I've slid it down some it won't be as wide and the colors won't be the same I think that's what I'm gonna do okay here we go here's our pillow cover now what I need to do is I need to get a piece of batting that's going to be the size of this fabric right here I'm gonna go ahead and quilt it and the way I'm going to quilt it is I'm just gonna take some dark blue thread and just quilt down inside the blue next to each tree when it comes to the one that crossed I'm not gonna sew across I'm just gonna head quilt up through here and then follow this one quilt that V and once again down here and up through that V so that'll give me several lines of quilting you could you can just do a whole bunch of straight lines or you can do diagonal but I don't want to cross over my tree so I'm just go ahead and stitch basically in the ditch right along each section I don't plan on putting any fabric behind my batting like you would for a standard quilt this piece isn't big enough but what I'm basically gonna do is just lay it on there and quilt it my machine it'll quit through the machine fine I've done this several times in the quilt as you go without putting a back on it and it works out well yeah you can basically see because I ended up using black thread because the dark blue I had was too shiny and it would have stood out too much on the front of my pillowcase which I didn't want I'm going to go ahead and give this a good iron and then I'll show you how we're going to trim it up I do not have a 16 and a half inch square ruler my largest one is 12 and a half so I'm gonna use the lines on my mat to square this up I'll just start by finding the lowest point here on the bottom and trimming that off and I will put this down on my my zero line down here in the center of my mat so I can see the numbers on both sides so have numbers I have my numbers here and my numbers here and with this on zero I'll just go ahead and find sixteen and a half and trim that up there sometimes it's easier just to spin your mat around and go from a different side then I'll take this side and I'm going to then on this side I chose this side because it has the least amount of blue so I'm gonna trim this up delete them out and then anything extra I'll take off of this side so I have a little here and a little here what I'm going to do is going to take the lines two black lines on my ruler and I'm gonna line it up with this bottom of my pillow cover because I know I know that this bottom has a straight edge because I just trimmed it up so when I line it up there I just make sure I have blue fabric - I line it up I just make sure I have blue fabric on this side of my ruler whichever is my smallest amount is here and my largest is here so I'm just gonna go right to the very edge at this side make sure I have my number one my zero point down here take the spot that I just had put that on zero once again I'm going to trim up at this end at 16 and a half but it's gonna be easier for me to spin it this way sorry I bumped into you now when it comes to scrap so you have options you can still save the pieces you cut off make some of these small pieces it's a lot of blue I won't bother these little pieces of shirt yeah I could put them in a crumb but I have plenty of those so I'm gonna toss those but when it comes to larger pieces like this not only am I gonna save this blue fabric but I'm also going to save this batting because I can put this inside a keychain wristlet or a handle of a bag or something like that and I'll be able to use this the same thing with these I know for the things that I do as long as I have a 1 inch strip then I can use it so I just take off the pieces of fabric before I store it sometimes I pull off the thread sometimes I leave it and I deal with it later it all depends on how I'm rushed for time and what kind of mood I'm but since I have you guys to sit here and talk to I'll go ahead and take some off so these I have my batting I have a large anything larger then say about 6 or 8 inches I keep in one container and all these strips I keep in a separate one so when it comes time to do one of those small projects I know exactly where to go to find my scraps ok so here is my pillow cover the front of it in my two back pieces now I have to decide since I use two separate colors I have to decide do I want the blue on top or do I want this khaki cold because whichever one you put on top is going to be the predominant color I think I kind of like it with the blue the blue is a sturdier fabric also and this outer piece is the one that's gonna get most of the work so I think I'll go like that so the next step would be to sew the backs to your extra pillow now you're gonna have right sides together I have to face my pillow up I remember I had to trim my pillow just a little bit smaller than these pieces so there's gonna be some hanging over but I line it up to the best of my ability everything's basically even now I have these wonder Clips so instead of pins mmm look at that see see my extra there I think what I'll do to make the sewing process easier since I have this much extra on both sides I want to go ahead and trim this off this way when I go to pin it or wonder clip it and sew it I know exactly where I'm going to be everything's gonna be lined up and I don't have to worry so you told you working with me as a process working with me you can learn all the things not to do when you watch my videos it's probably best to watch it all the way through and then go ahead and do your project because I'll have a lot of tips and tricks from when I mess up now if I were to follow a pattern I could follow it fine and there wouldn't be all this but I'm just basically kind of winging it as I go so now I'm gonna take my wonder clips and I'm just gonna clip a few I want to make sure I have the corners clipped sometimes it's easier just to move your mat now when it comes to where we're overhanging from where the overlap is on the envelope style pill on the back I like to make sure I get some extra pins in there or clips whatever the case may be so anyone who uses these you just kind of stick them on or you like me where you have to have all of the red color sticking up and all the clear color going down you go ahead and let me know down below in the comments if I'm the only one that's crazy like this not really OCD but for certain things like this I don't know it just kind of shows now I'm gonna go ahead and stitch all the way around this but when it comes to the parts where these two pieces overlap I'm gonna stitch all the way around it but I'm gonna stitch on these sides a couple times because this is where you're gonna have the most strain when you're putting the pillow in and out to wash it well at least I hope my son takes the cover off to wash it occasionally I guess it depends on how he uses it but anyways I do one stitch and then I go ahead right next to it and I do another stitch on both sides because this is where we're gonna turn it right-side out it's not gonna matter oh you know what I just did it's fine because when we were looking at this and we decided we liked the blue I have to fix this I like it when I catch a mistake before I actually do it when we turn this right side out this is gonna be on the inside so whatever color if you have two separate colors whatever color you want on the top you have to lay that down first because now we're looking at the inside of it did anyone else catch that before I did raise your hand I'm just happy I well then I wouldn't have researched it I would have just said it's perfectly fine because in reality it's just a preference of what color you want it's it's not gonna matter if you have two blue pieces back here it's not gonna matter top four bottom it'll be fine okay so I'm gonna go stitch all the way around it stitch down both of these sides where the flaps are twice and then I'll show you how we turn it around okay I went ahead and I stitched around everywhere and you can see where I added some extra lines of stitching you could stitch right on the same line and some people do I don't know this just seems to work for me and I'm fine with it this way now what we're gonna need to do is we're gonna need to trim these corners up a little so we don't have too much bulk when we turn our corners out so you just kind of stay away from your stitch line you just kind of angle cut it to reduce some of that bolt I just went ahead and I used about a generous quarter inch seam allowance when I was stitching this you can go more for the half inch if you'd like but make sure you take that into account when you first start cutting your fabric and trimming your pillowcase up your pillow cover-up okay moment of truth and now we're going to turn it and we just put our hands in grab a corner flip it out I'll just stick my hand in each corner push it up with my finger a little now you can be brave and use the tips of your scissors to point up push out your corners I'm not that brave I have my stuffing stick that came with my fiber fill in my plastic crochet hook these are the ones I try to choose the crochet hook will give you a nice rounded corner I hope I don't lie but I've yet to pop through a corner using this crochet hook because you've got two layers of fabric here fabric and batting here so just gently give them a little push you don't want all that fabric stuck up in the corner now if I want to kind of make sure it's out all the way I'll put it in and I'll give it a little twisting motion and it'll pop out anything left some people take their seam ripper and they can pop it in there and pull the fabric out I don't know it just seems to be my luck I tend to rip the fabric there we go one pillow cover let's put the pillow in okay so it's gonna take a bit of wrangling you kind of squish your pillow shove it up in there you take your flap you just bring all your pillow in there oh and sound effects are helpful or catch in the corner so yep I just take and I take my I hold my corner of my pillow and I shove it into the corner of my case and I get all the little loose threads make sure this is just tucked in there we go one pillow so what do you think now some people don't like the way it curves in and it has piggy tails on the end and some people don't care a lot of times when you get a pillow from the store it's gonna be that way now I put a little extra stuffing in the pillow because I know my son is gonna sit on it and lay on it and it's gonna squish down a little and then it's gonna fill in this curve and it's not gonna bother me plus what it's sitting like this I don't know it's got a little feet in little ears it's okay I'm fine with it when you so when you're on the inside and you're sewing your top to your back if you saw a little curve if you go ahead and do a little curve stitch here versus going to the corner and pivoting you also knock out this point in little ear part let me tell you my son Ravi is not gonna notice I'm not even sure he'll notice right away that there his shirts he's not it's not the most observant kid sometimes oh he's not the most observant young adults sometimes clean it all up handy dandy lint roller so there you go what do y'all think another way to use up your scraps now you could just use straight fabric in here if you want and if you don't want to make a pillow you can go ahead and just make a quilt square the same way my next unto toriel so along with me is I made some Mickey Mouse ears for a friend of the family so if you've ever wanted to make those stuffed Mickey Mouse ears that are on headbands go ahead and like and subscribe down below and you too we'll let you know when the next video is up you guys have a great day bye

Channel: RsIslandCrafts - Robin

Views: 18,597

Rating: 4.8761907 out of 5

Keywords: rsislandcrafts, crafting, sewing, quilting, scraps, calculator tape, foundation piecing, cape coral, florida, robin lalone, fabric scraps, fabric, leftovers, bits and pieces, strip piecing, scrap sewing projects, diy, artfire, zbesties, reuse, reduce, recycle, what to do with your fabric scraps, pillow, envelope pillow, how to, easy sewing project, upcycle, sewing with shirts, plaid, blue and gold, pillow cover, cushion cover, pillow sham, sew with me, sew, quilt, knitting

Id: ZJ0n39IllK4

Length: 36min 53sec (2213 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2017