Most recently, I've suddenly taken an interest in quilting. To get my feet wet, I made a quilted pillow for a friend's birthday. I made the decision all of a sudden, the day before we were taking her out to dinner and to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, so I had to work and make up my mind quickly. I went with a Ravenclaw house crest design.
It was much faster and easier than I expected. Starting with a small, simple project was a good idea because it let me uncover my feelings about different approaches without getting mired in anything. For example, I have realized that I would rather sew my own hands together than spend forever figuring out how to piece intricate designs together. Appliques are the way to go. I often prefer the way they look and I think it makes things faster and easier.
I made it in 4 main stages: pieced together the pillow front and body, pieced and applied the shield, applied the eagle and trims, and then applied the banner.
For the shield background, I measured stripes, cut them with a 1/4" seam allowance, and pieced together a rectangle large enough to turn on axis and fit a shield pattern I cut out of thin cardboard. Initially I planned to piece together the eagle and background like stained glass, but in the end I did the eagle as an applique. To accomplish being pieced together, I'd have to make a piece to go between each feather, and THEN I'd have to piece together the stripes in each individual partition and make sure they lined up once sewn together so... there was pretty much no way that was going to turn out NOT looking like crap.
I started out trying to piece together the eagle (working from an existing pattern), even though by then I had decided to do it as an applique, and let's just say it didn't go too well. Not to mention, it was annoying as crap to cut out all of the tiny pieces and keep them organized. Then I realized I was being an idiot and could cut out the eagle as a single piece of fabric. From there, not surprisingly, it went a lot more easily.
The shield and eagle both I cut out as actual size. The raw edges of the shield are encased under the trim, and I covered the eagle's raw edges with a satin stitch. (I did this by hand, but I just realized that my much nicer new sewing machine can probably do this if I set the zig-zag stitch length to 0, although machine sewing around all of the points would be a chore.)
For the body of the pillow, I took quarter yards of fabric, cut them in half, then cut the halves into irregular strips. I pieced together rectangles large enough to turn on axis and cut out a 15x15" square. (This method generates a lot of waste, and I suppose I could plan a square with diagonal stripes easily enough, so that I could cut strips to actual length. But, the scraps are good for piecing together for borders, and this method allowed for more freedom. I could change the tilt of the stripes, and instead of having to plan the order of the stripes, I could just pick a color at whim while sewing.)
For the banner with the house name, I cut out a piece with 1/4" seam allowance and embroidered Ravenclaw on it. I have never done any letter embroidery before, so I just kind of winged it out of stem stitches and back stitches. It was not the most professional looking embroidery you'll ever see, but it turned out looking as I wanted. I hand appliqued the banner, sewed the front to the back, and voila! Ready for stuffing.
I had originally planned to embroider "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure" on the back, but then I wound up doing embroidery around the eagle on the front, so there was no time.
Here's the nearly finished front:
And here are some progress pictures:
The front piece, looking slightly washed out, but you can see the metallic details of some of the fabrics.
The back (which has different fabric).
Front before eagle.
With eagle, partially embroidered.
Detail of the Ravenclaw piece. (the lack of uniformity in the letter size & placement is intentional)
So that's that! My first quilting project. This week I'm going to make another Harry Potter pillow, this time with a Hogwarts crest.
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