{michellepatterns.com}

Dear Stella Lily Pads from the Orangerie Collection

Lily Pads

Please Note: This post contains affiliate links.

This summer I've made two pillowcases while working out how to make them using the burrito (aka: magic) pillowcase method and use directional print fabric. There are existing tutorials for this, but I fell down the rabbit hole looking for one that summarized what needed to be done--rather than having to go step-by-step through the instructions--and eventually decided it was going to be faster to figure it out myself. 

There will be a blog post about how to do this soon. In the meantime, appropriate prints for pillowcases for my bed have been on my fabric radar and here is one that would work well. 

This quilting cotton fabric is called Lily Pads and it's from the Orangerie collection by Caitlin Wallace Rowland for Dear Stella. Water plants are fascinating and wouldn't it be nice to wake up to this dreamy print?

I've been using the pillowcase made from Elsie's Cat from the Glory collection and while it's super cute, and pretty delightful to wake up and see this cute cat print fabric, the colors don't match my bedroom. Since I need to make a set, might as well get something that will work better with the decor!  

This fabric also fits my pillowcase fabric criteria of having a light colored background and not many really dark colors. These two qualities are perfect for pillowcases since they get washed a lot and will fade. They'll look better longer since the fading will be less noticeable.  

If you'd like to see some other prints for pillowcases, check out my etsy Pillowcase Fabric favorite list for these fabrics. The list also has other shops where you can find this Lily Pad sewing fabric.

Using a Sewing Gauge to Make Circles

The other day I had a "learned something new today" moment because I wasn't aware a sewing gauge can be used like a compass to mark circles and scallops.  But, yes, it most certainly can! 

All you need to do is anchor it with a pin through the hole in the slider, insert the tip of a fabric pen in the hole at the end of the gauge, and then rotate the gauge to trace the circle or scallop. 

The two things to pay attention to are:

1. If you need an exact diameter for a circle or specific height for a scallop, the hole at the end isn't actually at the very end and you'll need to accommodate for the one or two millimeter difference.  
2. Make sure nothing is in the way of the gauge rotating around!  It's easy to knock stuff around or onto the floor and end up with a wobbly looking circle if there is something in the path of the gauge while it's rotating.

A sewing gauge is one of those sewing tools that is just super useful and while you can sew without one, they are inexpensive and so very useful that it makes sense to have at least one in your sewing tool kit. Mine gets used almost daily for something (often a Grocery Bag or Basket Bag) and I have several of them since they are easy to bury under fabric or misplace in other ways.  

Favorite Notions - Diagonal Seam Tape

Please Note: This post contains affiliate links.

The quilt top for this so very pink quilt is done and while making the binding I wanted to show you Cluck Cluck Sew's Diagonal Seam Tape just in case you haven't come across it yet.  

You may have noticed this tape because it's pretty popular for good reason--it's brilliant stuff!  But unless you make a lot of quilts, the point of it might not be so obvious. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first, but after looking around I see one of the ways it can be used is for sewing short, straight lines without needing to mark the stitching line on the fabric first. 

These are the types of lines quilters sew over and over and over again and combined with some of the other repetitive tasks of quilting, it can get tiresome marking these lines out.     

In the photo at the top, you can see the tape at the bottom of the picture and underneath the fabric the tape extends up to the markings on the machine plate.  As the two pieces are sewn together, all that's needed to maintain a straight stitch line is to keep the bottom intersection of the two binding pieces lined up with the red line at the center of the tape.  

If you'd like to try this tape, you can purchase it directly from Cluck Cluck Sew, or here are some etsy shops that carry this magical tape.