Mighty Mitered Flanged Pillow

 Here is my final pillow that I have been working on for my Grandmother.  I have to make this its own post as it really deserves it!  I say it deserves its own post becasue this was the first time that I have made anything that has a mitered flange on it.  It sounds and looks easy enough, right?  Well, it isn't.  At least it wasn't for me.

With all the pillows that I have made in the past month, I have learned how to do 2 new t hings.  The first was I learned how to sew an invisible zipper and the other was this mitered flange.  The difference between the two were day and night.  I used the wonderful internet (YouTube) to find tutorials on how to sew an invisible zipper, however you would not believe that I could not find ANYTHING on how to sew a mitered flange.  I could not believe it (and still can't).  I thought that maybe I was not searching for the right thing so I tried everything I could think of.  When I finally gave up I asked my wonderful hubby to help.  He can find ANYTHING on the internet.  So, I began to give him a quick lesson on what I was trying to do and told him all the possible names and "terms" that this could possibly be found under and then let him go at it.  Even he couldn't find anything (video tutorials).  Finally, he did find a PDF document with some basic and mismatched steps.  So, I printed it out and studied it for days, trying to make out what to do, how to do it and where to begin.  In the mean time (during these few days of internet searching), I decided to try and figure this all out on my own.  It never happened.  I can't even remember how many times I ripped all the stitches that I sewed.

Finally, it clicked, after much time of reading and rereading this list of steps that I found, I did it! Now, I have to say that it is not the best.  There are quit a bit of nips and tucks around the pillow, specially around the corners, but overall  it looks okay and it is completed.  Here are a couple of pictures of this "mighty mitered flanged" pillow. 

This last picture is the back of the pillow where you can see the invisible zipper that I put in it.  I am still working on perfecting the invisible zipper as you can see just a little bit of it on the left.  You shouldn't be able to see any of it, hence the name "invisible" zipper.

Sewing projects

I finally pulled my sewing machine out, after moving a few months ago.  I had a small pile of clothes that needed a little extra help, a few pillows and a BIG quilt project to get started on.  I finished my clothes mending and one pillow.  I have 2 more pillows to complete and then I can get started on the quilt.  Here are a few pictures to share with you on what it all looks like.

This is the one pillow that I have finished.  It was hard becasue I am learning how to sew invisible zippers. I purchased the special invisible zipper foot attachment for sewing machines, but of course it would not work on my machine.  So, I logged into my online friend, ebay, and found the exact one that I needed, that would fit my machine.  I received it yesterday. Yay! I never would have thought that I would have been so happy to receive such a small piece of plastic. Ha!

Here is the "before" picture of the next pillow that I will be putting together. I am so excited about this one as I looked and looked for the perfect fabric to match the rooster. You can't really see just how perfectly all the colors match, but they do.  

This picture is one of the blocks that will make up the king size quilt that I will be starting soon. This will be a BIG project.  I hope that I can cut out time each day to work on it so that I can finish in a short amount of time. I hope to have it completed by mother's day.

I will try to post and document my progress here.  Maybe it will help motivate me to get it all done by the deadline that I have given myself. We shall see...