Shakespeare and Pansies in a Union Jack Toss Pillow

Pansies, Shakespeare, lace and tiny rick-rack

I am still obsessed with the Union flag of Great Britain.  That tea cozy didn’t satisfy my inner Betsy Ross (or whoever designed and made the first Union Jacks).  In addition to the tea cozy, I also made a throw pillow for my friend the Birthday Girl.

She loves pansies, England and Brit Lit, so this is what I made for her from fabrics I had on hand.

Pastel Pansy take on a venerable flag.

I think this is a particularly pretty pansy print, but I adore the one with writing on it.  It is a list of flowers that are mentioned in each Shakespeare comedy.  (Oh look! It used to be available on Amazon! )

I like to make these pillow covers removable so they can be washed.  (This fits a standard 16” pillow form.) 

Spill a drop of tea? Just toss it in the wash.

The back opening is made with a buttoned envelope style.  I have a genius designer friend who uses re-cycled men’s shirts for the back of her pillows.  She just cuts the button-front shirt to size for the pillow back.  I, on the other hand, make work for myself.  (Though I guess I might have used a men’s shirt if I had found one with pansies on it.)

Buttoned up back of pillow

I have a zillion visions in my head for other takes on this design.  It's so versatile and can be personalized in so many ways.  I have one more pillow cover to show you.  But I have to send it to that Birthday Girl first (because I know she will recognize that it’s for her if she sees it here.) 

Rule Britannia: A Union Jack Tea Cozy

I have been a little obsessed with the use of the British flag as a design element for a while now.  I even have a Pinterest board dedicated to all the ways you can apply it to furnishings, clothing, tea sets etc.  I am particularly fond of the ways other color schemes are substituted for the official red, white and blue.

Apparently these ideas have been cooking in the back of my head for a while.  Because when an Anglophile friend’s birthday rolled around. I had a couple of ideas of perfect gifts for her.

I thought a proper British tea cozy with a Union Jack design would be a fun and useful gift.  In my stash, I discovered a fabric with famous sites in London.  I fell in love with it when I saw it last summer, but didn't know what I might use it for.  It was meant to be.  I also came up with a navy fabric with tiny hearts on it—after all this is about loving England.  That fabric joined the stash some time in the late 1980s, I think.  Does that make it vintage?

I chose some flat cotton lace that seemed perfect for the white stripes in the flag and a simple tiny red rick rack completed the flag.  For the lining, I picked a heavy red striped cotton pillow ticking. It pays to have a good stash when inspiration hits.

Can you identify these London scenes? (Double decker bus doesn't count!)

So here is the completed cozy. I tried to feature different scenes in the London fabric on each side of it.  The pot should stay quite hot since I layered in cotton batting and an insulated one between the lining and the outer fabrics.  Just in case the handle gets too hot under the cozy, I included a small potholder which I rolled up and placed in the loop at the top. (The loop is very helpful for pulling the cozy off the teapot.)

Here is one side of the cozy showing the London scenes side of the potholder.

London scenes, lace and love

This is the reverse of the cozy and the potholder.  

I quilted a heart in the potholder which uses the same ticking that lines the cozy.

I think this came out well and have ideas about other fabric combinations that would be fun to do.  Because I am still obsessed with that flag. But next time, I am changing up the color scheme.

Succumbing to the Lure of Frozen: Anna Costumes

A couple of months ago during the great Frozen obsession of the winter of 2013-14, a former colleague sent out an SOS on Facebook.  Did anyone have an Elsa costume that they could lend her for some special showing of the movie that she was taking her daughters to?  I didn’t have an Elsa costume just lying around, but was inspired to make one for Lily, whose birthday was coming up.    

As everyone knows, Frozen is about two sisters who happen to be princesses.   That gave me an opportunity to make a coordinating costume for Maggie.  And, as usual, if I make an outfit for the girls, I would make matching ones for their dolls.  

 So here’s Anna, the little sister.  (I’ll share Elsa next time)

Two Annas

This project took some research.  I looked for images on line but there seemed to be quite a few outfits on these princesses.  I broke down and streamed the movie to figure out which costumes were most emblematic of the characters.  Anna has an adorable costume that had this lovely floral trim around the hem.  I didn't have anything similar sitting around, so I substituted this snowflake fabric. 

Anna's dress and Cape

For the cape, I used purple velour that my sister had given me to make costumes for the girls.  (She had planned to make a princess dress with it. So a princess cape is close enough.)  I didn't have a pattern for this two-layered cape, and if I had to do it again, I would make it shorter to be more like the movie.
I loved the detail of the ball fringe in the movie.  Pity the poor animator who was in charge of keeping those balls bouncing!  I actually did have ball fringe on hand, but it was hot pink and lime green, so that was one of the few things I had to hunt down at a local discount fabric store.  The gold trim isn't really kosher, but I thought a princess cape should have a little bling. 

Cape with dress

The doll outfit is very similar.  I substituted rick rack for the ball fringe at this scale because I couldn't find any that was tiny enough. The velvet I used in the bodice was too heavy for this little doll dress, so I used some satin left over from the Sleeping Beauty costume.

Anna costume for dollies

The dolly ensemble

As soon as she tried it on, Maggie wanted to go outside and play in this outfit.  I guess she liked it. 

Two Anna Dollies

Day 6, 94 to go: Zoe’s Tree Skirt (Part 2)

It matches the thank-you card!

When I opened my email this morning, I discovered that one of my sisters actually reads this blog.  Who knew?  She wanted to make sure I knew what size to make those pjs for her boys—you know, the ones that I didn’t work on yesterday.  So I guess I am going to have to break down and assemble them.   I got a very sweet thank-you note from her sons in the snail mail today. (I had sent them some magic trick decks of cards)

Note to my sister: Hey Martha, this is the fabric I picked out for your kids’ pajamas.  Based on the image on the thank-you card, I am guessing you like it?

I worked on Zoe’s tree skirt again today. I stitched that ginormous rick-rack to it and discovered that I have really good spatial relations skills.  I had about 4 yards of it, which was not enough to put around the outside edge of the skirt as I had originally envisioned.   Yesterday I had pinned it in place to get an idea of how it might fit into the design I had in mind. 

Arbitrarily, I decided to sew it 4 ¾” from the edge.  Not 4 ½”, not 5”.  I have no logical reason that 4 ¾” struck me as right.  I basted the rick-rack in place and discovered I had found the circumference that was just right for the amount of rick-rack I had available.  There was about an inch left over at each end, which was perfect to tuck under to finish the edge.   I could have done math out the wazoo for hours to figure it out.  But it turns out, at least for today, all I needed was to follow my intuition. 

Any guesses?

I also worked on a series of pink sections that I had started making last night.  I stopped when I got tired of the intricate cutting, thinking I probably had another dozen or so to make.   Today I pinned them in place only to discover I had gotten tired of making them just as I'd made the last one I'd need!  I am feeling quite triumphant about my sense of space when it comes to sewing.  I don’t know how I did that, and am wondering if anyone would be impressed if I put that on my resume.  This is what the back looks like today.  You can see the straight line of the basting on the large rick-rack, the curvy stitching along the bottom edge of the rick-rack and then a line of stitching at odd angles above.  Can anyone guess what I am making?

I am in awe of my spatial relations skills today.

How about now from the front?  Any ideas? Please guess in the comments section below. If you guess right, I will whip up a pair of pajama bottoms for you.  I thought up a name for this design—as if it were an artwork on display in a gallery.  I will reveal it tomorrow, along with a sample of one of the pink sections finished.

So far, blogging daily has been really helpful to my getting-through-the-day process.  The discipline was tough to force myself into-both making something every day and then writing about it.  I don’t feel like I have gotten into my writing groove yet, but I do sense I am getting somewhere.   
If you want to read an incredibly entertaining blog, I highly recommend checking the link here to Sharon Wheatley’s blog, My Own Space.  She is married to a guy who went to school with my younger sisters.  She is a Broadway musical actress. He is a music theater professor and music director.  They live in NYC and have two daughters with the most lovely literary names, Charlotte and Beatrix. Sharon writes in the funniest voice and manages to make both the crises and the daily drone of life entertaining, exciting and full of cliffhangers. She is also the author of a book called Til the Fat Girl Sings. How can you not love a book with that title? (And it's really cheap on Amazon right now.)

I love Fleece.  And also shrubbery. Ni!

Apparently today was Felicity’s day to take the watch.  She perched herself in the middle of the table for a while on alert.  Then she crawled into the pile of fabric and took a nice long nap.  She is a big fan of fleece fabric.

As I was finishing up this entry, Fergus jumped up on the table to play with the mouse.  Not a toy mouse.  The computer mouse. I had no idea he understood IT.