Left Overs

Have you ever gotten up one morning, walked into your sewing room/space and realized that you had no new projects to work on...and had a few bits and pieces sitting around that you had always planned to do something with, but never got to it? 

Well, I had exactly that this morning.  I have not been sewing alot recently with all the moving I have been doing, but I finally had a weekend here in the Bay Area without significant commitments and a real desire to get back into sewing.

So in I went and sat looking at my table wondering what I should work on.  The thought of an entirely new project seemed to be beyond my mental abilities, but I still wanted to sew.  So I pondered and puttered and cleaned up the clutter on my sewing table.  When I finished doing all of that, I had sitting in front of me the same 5 wonky star blocks that I have been staring at for the last 8 months or so, wondering what to do with them when they didn't fit into the improvisitational piece that they originaly were destined to be incorporated into.  But they were in shades of aqua and orange that I have moved away from...

I couldn't throw them away - they were way to cute.  As I sat at the table this morning, I decided I would challenge myself to make something great with these little blocks using only my stash and what I had in my closets (that included pillow forms).  That's where the idea of Left Overs came from.  Turns out I have/had 4 pillow forms to choose from.  Two rather standard 18"/20"; one circle and one rectangle.  I chose the rectangle and took 3 of the stars and began to create a pillow.  Not that I need another pillow, but I thought for a gift it might be something fun to do with the end of my project.

I also decided that I would practice with an invisible zipper so that I would be comfortable in the future with invisible zippers.  I have sewn many an invisible zipper in the past, but always in clothing, not a pillow.  I used the zipper I had (white) and put it into the pillow. 

Just a few short hours later, I completed this:

 







I may need to work on the pillow to polish it up.  It's a bit too pointy towards the corners.  I don't want to be able to see the zipper (although the white zipper makes it rather obvious as a teaching/practice experience - if it were an appropriate color it wouldn't be visible).  Over all, I am happy with it.

I did learn an important lesson - seam ripping when you are working with shot cotton is problematic!  I hate seam ripping in the first place but shot cotton is so fine and so difficult to deal with, it was a little more problematic when I got to seam ripping. 

It was a fun opportunity to utilize something that I had already made and incorporate it into things from my stash.

Have you had this experience?  Do you look at some of your "little" pieces and wonder what you are going to do with them and then work on it at some point?  If so, what have you done with your "little bits"?  Think about Left Overs and let me know if the concept works for you.

Aaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.