Wednesday Sewing - Grandmother's Flower Garden Pillowcases Part 2

I love my finished pillowcase and have begun a second one for my husband.  It was a bit of work, but nothing mind bending or difficult - just work.  I decided to machine quilt it partly because I was interested in having the entire piece machine made and partly because I wanted the durability of machine quilting since I'll be washing/drying this weekly, unlike most quilts.

If you're just joining us, I introduced piecing Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks in this post and started the quilted pillowcase last week in this post.  If you're new to quilting, I cover beginning quilting here.

Last week, I sewed my flower blocks together to make a large piece of fabric.

1.  Layer the pieced fabric with a low loft batting and a lining (I used muslin).

2.  Quilt by sewing just inside the seam on each edge of every hexagon.  DO NOT quilt any hexagon that is on an edge - any hexagon that doesn't have another hexagon attached to each side of it.  You'll be joining this fabric into a tube and need to have these edges unquilted.

3.  When you are finished quilting each hexagon (except for the edge hexagons), pin the batting and lining fabric back away from the two edges that will be joined to make a tube (side A to side A on last week's diagram).

4.  Join the edge hexagons on the two side A's together to make one continuous tube of fabric.

5.  Turn the tube inside out. 

6.  Take out the pins that were holding the batting and lining back.  Trim the batting so that the edges just touch each other.  Try for no overlap.  Hand sew the edges together (just touching) in a whip stitch.

7.  Pin the lining together over the batting so that the pins are right at the bottom where the lining meets the quilted fabric and batting.

8.  Keeping the rest of the quilt free, sew a seam line along the pin line.  Trim close to sewing and finish the edge with a zigzag stitch.

9.  Turn the tube back to right side out and quilt the line of hexagons that you pieced together last, beginning at the middle and working to each side.  This part is a bit physically difficult because of having to keep the rest of the tube out of the way!  You'll see why we didn't quilt the whole pillowcase when it was in its tube form.

Quilt the edge hexagons.  Since we'll be trimming this piece you don't need to quilt the very top sides.  I just do this in one continuous stitch line like in the photo below right.

10.  Turn the tube inside out again.  Pin one end of the tube together and draw a straight line (pencil is fine) along the edge where both sides meet.  You'll have a lot of hexagons past this edge that don't meet up with hexagons from the other side.  Sew a seam along this pencil line and trim close to sewing.

11.  Measure a piece of eyelet lace the length around your pillowcase plus one inch.  Since this seam will be very visible, we want to finish it.  Put ends of right sides together and sew a 1/2 inch seam.  Trim one side of the seam 1/4 inch.  Turn the other side of the seam around the trimmed side and pin.  Top stitch 1/4 inch from the seam. 

12.  Draw another line on the open end of your tube like you did on the other end.  Cut along this line.

13.  Pin right side of lace tube to right side of pillowcase and sew together.

14.  Turn pillowcase right side out and top stitch on the lace 1/4 inch from the seam.

15.  Press and you're finished!

These do take a bit of work, but I think they're so gorgeous that they're definitely worth it.  And very cushy soft to sleep on!

Happy Creating!  Deborah