Patchwork Projects

I have finished making the patchwork part of one of my quilting projects.  I am going to take this square and make it into a pillow.  I bought a plain pillow and am making a zipper pillow case.

Sounds easy, right?

Before I started, I had no idea how to pull this together, and was terrified.  Instead of having my mom, aunts, sisters, cousins and grandmothers teach me how to do this, I have the internet, where I can watch someone else's mother, grandmother, aunt and sister show me how to make a zippered pillow case on YouTube.  This video has 11,606 views as of today.  At least three of those are my views.  Once I saw this video, I thought, "I can do this.  No problem."  Thankfully, I could watch the video several times to make sure I got it right, which was necessary.  Placing a zipper is some spacial reasoning task that I seem to fail when asked to do it alone.  I can figure it out right after I watch the video, but it escapes me two days later.

Pinning the zipper together.

I skipped the step where she casually mentions finishing the edges.  I have no clue how to do that.  I googled "finishing edges" and there is a guy--a dude--with what look like prison tats* on his hands showing how to finish an edge without a serger.

All of these folks have found a new use for the GoPro cameras.  Heck with skiing in the back country or going down some crazy double black.  Forget mountain biking over a cliff or hang gliding.  GoPros are awesome for sewing demonstrations.  I imagine these people sitting there with bike helmets on or some other attachment sewing and narrating away.  I digress.

What helped me get over my fear of pulling something together when I have no idea what I am doing?  Buying the stuff, and leaving it on the floor of my bedroom, the plain pillow in the plastic bag mocking me to finish.  The sock monkey fabric was too cute to let it collect dust until I have grandchildren in 20 years.  I had to finish.  When I was halfway done, I bought more material for my next project so I could start right away, ala Hemingway always leaving a sentence unfinished at the end of the day so he would have someplace to start when he sat back down to write again in the morning.  I could finish one project, and slide right into the next without interruption.

Thank goodness for YouTube.  I don't think I'd make it without the kind folks who share their wisdom through the electronic ether.  I am not on the plains of Nebraska in 1870 where there is no one to ask how to do this.  A city slicker like me learned how to bind a quilt from a woman in Missouri and another in South Dakota.  Am I the only one?  No.  Both videos have nearly 500,000 views.

Not that I have anything against books.  Quilting books are the best.  I have lots of books on quilting and sewing, which are fantastic for ideas on starting.  They are like quilt porn.

And I finished.  Hooray!

Fox and the finished zippered pillows.

Fox and the pink sock monkey quilt.

Sock monkey quilt for Fox for the chair in my office.

* I shouldn't tease, on so many levels.  I wouldn't tease a woman for wanting to be an engineer or in the military.  I'd say, "Go for it, sister!"  I also seriously doubt this guy was in prison.   If he were, wow, that is awesome that he has turned his life around such that he is teaching people to sew.  And those tattoos might be covering surgical scars.  Godspeed, Mr. Burly Sew!