Finished more things

In the morning, I did a little cleaning (and piano practice). Then, after lunch, I decided to do some sewing. At first I was going to work on a quilt top but then I spotted the Fluffy Unicorn (the unicorn doll from Despicable Me) fabric I had bought...in 2017? I think? for pillowcases and figured it was high time to make them up.

I used the All People Quilt "burrito pillowcase" pattern. It is a downloadable .pdf but you're going to have to search on it because I can't directly link the .pdf here. But if you use "All People Quilt burrito pillowcase" you should be able to get it.

I like it because it's super easy. Once you figure it out, the hardest part (for me) is cutting it (because I have limited cutting space). The rolling part is maybe a little conceptually tricky, but once you've done one pillowcase, it's relatively simple.

One other thing I like about the pattern is that all the seams are enclosed - the edge is sewn on double, and the pillowcase itself is French-seamed:



I tried to get a photo of one inside-out so you can see that there are NO raw edges there - so no worry about raveling, and no need to finish any seams.

(And that is my own Fluffy Unicorn, from a pattern off Ravelry).

I used a contrast fabric for the edges. This was just some random stripe in my stash but I really like how it turned out:

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As I was working on those, I thought, "I should just dig out the Pony fabric I also have, and make all the pillowcases I've been planning on." One set of this came from JoAnn's:



They're not going the "right" way, exactly, but I didn't feel like "fussy cutting" (doing the long pieces straight-of-grain rather than cross-grain, which wastes more fabric, and takes more effort, and adds another seam that then can't easily be done French-seamed). Also, by doing it this way, I had enough fabric to do two - I would not have otherwise.

And then a BIG piece (I still have some leftover, and I actually cut the edge with the straight-of-grain to change the direction of the Ponies) that came from eQuilter. This is a coarser fabric and doesn't feel as nice as the other ones - I don't know if it was cheaper greige goods or if the dark dye did something to it.






I do think maybe it's the greige goods. The Fluffy Unicorn one is the nicest fabric, and it came from an indie quilt shop (Kaleidoscope Quilts in Whitesboro). The white cases are intermediate in fabric quality and the fabric is from JoAnn's. And the purple cases are the coarsest fabric, and it was a cheapish fabric from eQuilter. (I know they say there are different grades of the fabric "blank" that printing is done on; it's called greige goods. Typically the small quilt shops get the highest quality and have the highest prices, with the bigbox stores like JoAnn's it's a crap shoot whether it's good or not, and some of the discount places seem to have a coarser fabric.


All the fabrics have been prewashed (both to take care of any shrinkage but also to get out excess dye or the sizing/other chemicals that are used in processing*)

(*I know less are used now than in the 1970s; I remember some fabric stores I went in as a kid had a very distinctive chemical smell, and I think some of that was actually formaldehyde!)



And yes. I use six pillows on my bed: three form a sort of headboard (I have what's sometimes called a "Hollywood frame" and there is no headboard and footboard), one is for my head, and two are "outboard pillows" if I need one to prop up or if I need one under an arm. So I use a lot of pillowcases.

(I have also heard of "change them daily if you have allergies" but I can't quite manage that).