January 5, 2010
Now that we have our bias strips cut, we need to join them end to end to create a long strip, cover our cording & apply it to the pillow face.
First to join the separate pieces of bias strips. Each of your strips will have angled ends as shown (below).
Now you’ll want to baste stitch your cording into place. A zipper foot works best for this. This is simply to keep the cording encased in the bias trim. If you get really good at the whole process of working with trim, you’ll find you can encase the cording and assemble the pillow all in one step. But, when just starting, it’s good to go ahead baste stitch your cording.
Now we’re ready to baste the cording on to the pillow’s face fabric. I’ve finished the edges of the pillow’s face and backing fabric. It’s nice to do that to keep things from unraveling inside. If the pillow doesn’t have a zipper, it’s not necessary to finish the interior edges since you’ll never access them. But since we’ll have a zipper, I serged those edges. If you don’t have a serger, you can do a zig zag stitch right over the edge on your regular sewing machine, and you’re good to go.
Apply the cording to the face of the pillow (below). Note to start stitching about 1 1/2″ from the end of the cording. This will allow us to join the beginning and ending of the cording when the time comes.
Sooner or later, you’ll come to a corner. You’ll need to do a little surgery on your cording to get it to turn a nice 90 degrees at each corner. Your pillow is square after all. Here’s a diagram below:
Here’s a pic of cutting at a 45 degree angle to allow the cording to turn at the corners (below). When you get to the corner and need to turn, drop your needle down to hold things in place, raise your foot and turn everything 90 degrees to head up the next side. Once turned, lower your foot and start sewing. Since your needle was lowered, you can pick up right where you left off.
Keep going all the way around, cutting your corners as you go. When you come back around to the beginning of the cording, it’ll look a little like this below. Cut the cording about 1 1/2″ past the starting point.
Next you’ll need to trim the cording itself inside the strip, but not the strip. To do this, I open up the stitches that are holding the cording inside and reveal the cording. When all is said and done, you’ll want your edge to look continuous, without an overlap. So you’ll need to trim the excess cording inside. It’s a smart idea to put a piece of tape around the cording before trimming, but I didn’t do that here. The cording can fray, and become a little unwieldy, so I’d suggest taping first.
See how I sort of ‘peeled’ the fabric away from the cording in order to trim it inside (above)? Now it’ll join, and I have some extra fabric to turn under and finish off the seam (below).
I turn under the raw edge (above) and rewrap the fabric over the cording. Now I can sew it into place (below).
You can see the turned under edge above. There are of course, lots of ways of joining and finishing this seam. This is what I’ve found easiest to show and explain. Once you do it a few hundred times, you can do it even fancier where you actually join your bias strips together at this seam, thus eliminating that little fold detail.
Next you can apply your backing fabric, insert your zipper, stuff it with your pillow insert and you’re done!
December 30, 2009
There were two things that intimidated me to death when I first starting sewing: bias & zippers.
Bias: I’d heard the term when someone would describe why a skirt flowed so nicely and flattered so well. They’d say That’s because it’s cut on the bias. Aaahhh, of course…on the bias. What the heck does that mean?
If you want to take your DIY sewing projects to the next level in finish and design, you really do need to know about bias. With bias, you can create beautiful trimmed edges and *corded* edges, which is what we’ll do on the shams we’ll create. Yes, you can buy some beautiful premade corded trims out there. But it’s not always easy to find the exact color you need, and they can be very pricey. By creating custom bias trim yourself, you can really create that ‘pulled together’ look we all love.
Here are a couple illlustrations that show the basic anatomy of a bolt of fabric and how bias lays out on it.
To get started, we’ll need a piece of fabric to cut up into strips which we’ll join together end-to-end to cover our cording. The amount of fabric to cut up depends on 1) the size of your finished pillows and 2) the size of the cording you’re covering. Here we’re making (3) 26″ pillows, and the cording is chunky, 3/4″ diameter, so we’ll be cutting 3″ strips to cover it. I’ll need approximately 30″ of 54″ wide fabric for the cording.
I’m sure there’s a mathematical equation to figure out exctly how much fabric you’ll need base upon the total linear feet you’ll use, and the size of the cording you’re covering. If that equation exists, I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it myself, let alone be able to explain it in terms everyone else could understand. As with everything else in learning, trial and error is the best teacher.
First thing we’ll do it cut a 30″ piece of the fabric we’ll use for the cording. We’re aiming for nice square edges here. Accuracy counts in sewing, unfortunately.
Now we’ll cut along our nice straight gridded board lines and get a 30″ swath of fabric. We’re removing the selvages here too. (below)
Next begins the series of origami-like folding that will result in nice bias cut strips (below). For this first step, it’s not necessary to align on to cutting board’s grid. You’re going to fold and turn coming up.
This is sort of like the magician who starts his trick by telling you to watch his hands closely. The lower right corner starts the folding here (below).
Keep pulling the corner up diagonally up to the left until it begins to align with the top edge. It’ll happen, you’ll see (below).
Now we’re going to turn the whole piece so that the 45 degree edge (above) is aligned on the vertical lines of your board (below).
Now we’re going to tidy everything up a bit and align it on your board’s gridded line (below).
Finally, we can start cutting (below)
This is what you’ll end up – now the fun can start! (below)
Coming up next — Joining Your Bias Strips and Covering Cording!
December 29, 2009
In this DIY series, I’m going to attempt to clearly show and describe how to make a zippered and envelope sham. We’ll see how it goes! You can use these techniques to make beautiful pillows of any shape and size. I’ll be showing a 26″ square pillow sham here, with a custom corded edge detailing.
There are several assumptions made here: 1) you have a sewing machine with a few feet: a standard foot, and a zipper foot. 2) You have some tools for cutting into accurate, square sizes. If you’d like to get into making the most of your machine and DIY ability, you should invest in a large cutting board, ruler & a rotary cutter. They’re all used in these descriptions.
You can take a look at what you’ll be able to make with these instructions…a beautiful, reversible large pillow sham with a super chunky custom corded edge. It looks good enough to eat.
Coming up next, Creating Custom Bias Trim…
December 28, 2009
Tomorrow I’ll be showing step-by-step directions for making your own pillow shams. It’ll include king size shams & 27″ square pillows.
Here’s a sneak peek at the fabric used…
December 14, 2009
I slid the Legos off the tables and tidied up the dog toys strewn across the floor to take part in The Nester’s Christmas Tour of Homes. I love seeing everyone’s decorations–the variety of styles & creative talent is amazing!
November 18, 2009
The new bedding set is officially in the shop. It is the perfect mix of colors and textures for a traditional nursery. The main fabric is a nursery rhyme toile in pastel shades and depicts classic nursery rhyme images. We’ll be adding a boy version this week!
To kick off the new set, we’re offering a special (in addition to the 10% off currently on the site). With each purchase of the new bedding sets, you’ll receive your choice of matching accent pillow. The choices include: 18×18 square, 12×16 rectangular, and bolster style FREE. The images are shown below!
Some images of additonal accessories to match this new set…
November 16, 2009
Tomorrow we’ll be adding the beautiful bedding set shown below to our shop. We also have a boy version which will be added immediately after. These sets are beautiful. We’ll also be showing a matching accessory to each our new sets.
To celebrate the new sets, we’ll be offering a choice of free matching accent pillow (18″ square, 12×16 rectangular or bolster) with each bedding set purchase.
Stay tuned!
November 11, 2009
October 25, 2009
My idea of the perfect Sunday afternoon is to slave away in the kitchen. No joke. I really do. I love this time of year with the windows open, cooking shows on the television, and a big cooking project in the works. One of those projects is pasta making. Yes, there are some shortcuts you can take, like making the dough entirely in a food processor, and using a pasta machine, but it’s still a labor intensive process.
This time I made two types of pasta. One for the less adventurous eaters in our house: a simple cheese ravioli in red sauce. The other my personal favorite: butternut squash with brown butter sage.
Both pastas used the same pasta dough. Simply add 4 eggs, 3 1/2 c. all purpose flour and salt to the food processor with the dough blade in place. Run it until the dough balls up and runs around the outside of the bowl. Then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead a few times.
Once the dough is needed a few times, wrap it in plastic and set it aside on your work surface to rest about 10-20 minutes.
While your pasta rests, mix up your cheese filling. Ricotta, egg, salt, finely chopped parsley & basil and loads of fresh parmesan. Can’t go wrong!
Back to the pasta–run it through your pasta machine starting with the widest setting first, gradually moving down until you reach the second thinnest setting. Did I mention that little hands love to help with this??
Lay out your bottom piece, and space a heaping tablespoon of cheese filling along the length of the dough.
Put your top layer on, press out the air and cut with the fancy schmancy cutters you only use twice a year. Or an appropriately sized glass turned upside down works too.
Gently boil these babies, or freeze them in a flat layer. Once frozen, you can gather them up into a larger bag stacked on each other. Freezing them flat first keeps them from sticking together. When I learned this trick for berries and cookie dough, it was a happy happy day for me.
Saute some olive oil, garlic and onion til soft, and add a can of really good crushed tomatoes. Let that simmer with a few sprigs of fresh basil for about half hour and season with salt/pepper and a dash of sugar as needed. It’s a simple and delicious red sauce that is a go-to quick dinner around here. Top with freshly grated Parmesan. There’s never enough Parmesan for the kiddies here.
BROWNED BUTTER SAGE & BUTTERNUT SQUASH PASTA
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The butternut squash & sage pasta starts out with cubed butternut squash spread out and ready to roast…about 1″ cubes.
The cast of herbs and spices that make this squash sing. The result is a sweet & savory squash. They are: fresh nutmeg, cinnamon, sage & fennel seed.
Finely chop the fresh sage, add to a small bowl with some ground cinnamon, nutmeg, fennel seed, salt and pepper. Mix them together and toss onto the butternut squash along with a drizzle of olive oil. Roast in oven at 375 til the squash is nice and tender, slight carmelized.
Meanwhile, melt some butter in a pan and let it simmer away as the milk solids evaporate. Add some fresh sage leaves and keep an eye on things as the butter slowly begans to brown. It’s magic in a pan as the butter takes on a nutty goodness and the sage leaves crisp as they fry.
I had every intention pureeing the squash, adding cheese and making these into ravioli. After working away on the cheese ravioli, I decided to take the easy way out. Instead of re-rolling the pasta scraps from the cheese ravioli, I cut them into ‘rags’ instead. These were not fancy, by any means, but it gave a nice rustic feel to the finished dish.
Fresh pasta rags on bottom, roasted butternut squash on top, and finished with the brown butter sauce and freshly grated Parmesan. This dish is a perfect combination of sweet and savory. Love it! One of my favorite flavor combinations for fall.
September 24, 2009
Today, Nester shared a design ‘cut and paste’ project in her home where she re-purposed an underutilized piece of furniture. It made me immediately think of a change we’ve recently made around here…
Every year or so, we conduct a sort of ‘musical chairs’ project upstairs. Instead of chairs, we play ‘musical bedrooms’. The boys decided finally, that they’d like their own rooms which meant: a) our guest room disappeared, b) we had a bonus room again and c)I had to clean out my very disorganized fabric room and turn it back into the legitimate purpose, a bedroom.
I had a hard time convincing a young boy to embrace my great aunt’s mahogany bedroom set which had served as guest room furniture for the last few years. It’s beautiful furniture that has a lot of sentimental value to me. I knew I wanted to somehow use it somewhere in the house.
I convinced the better half to lug the 1,000 pound bureau downstairs and see how it would look in the family room. A bureau in the family room? I wasn’t sure.
Turns out, it fit perfectly between the windows in the room. And, the fact that the legs were raised meant the vent below could still function to heat and cool the room.
Now we have extra space to store school supplies for homework, etc. The drawer space is coming in very handy. And, the top allows for some display space.
