Tag: Pillowcase

Elephant Carpet

Slowly but surely turning a thread frame into a fluffy pillowcase.

Some time ago, I found a kit to make a small scale carpet in the thrift shop. For €1.50, I couldn’t leave it behind even though I wasn’t sure how much fun latch hooking was going to be. It’s got 12 colours to make up a scene of a baby elephant and its mother on the plains. Finished size was 40×40 cm so it really wasn’t a large project. It stayed behind in the craft room for some months before I decided that it would be a good ‘no think’ project for these brain-dead end-of-the-year weeks.

Turns out that latch hooking is one of those things that I do actually enjoy because it doesn’t require too much attentiveness. It really stimulates my ‘must finish this’-attitude that I also suffer from with cross-stitching. As such, I can be entertained for hours but forget to do other useful thinks like drinking water and eating lunch.

Latch hooking works by having a sort of thread frame that’s painted in the colours of the threads. You fold a corresponding thread around the latch hook, then pull the latch hook through the frame. The little ‘latch’ opens, and you put the double thread over it and pull back, effectively making a knot around the frame threads. Then repeat that.. an absolutely insane amount of times. 40×40 cm is still maneuverable, but I wouldn’t want to tackle anything bigger, I think. The frame is quite stiff and I managed to rub my left pinky and ring finger raw before I figured I’d put some plasters on for protection. But no matter, after a few days of hours of latch hooking, I got myself some very cute and fluffy elephants.

Once I finished the last blue thread, I had to figure out what to do with it. The instructions say to fold the ends inward and sew down. While that seemed sensible, I still wanted it to be just a little more useful. So I decided to make it into a fluffy elephant pillow. Some white poly fabric was employed for this plan. I basically made a pillowcase and then hand stitched it to the back of the carpet. So now I’ve got an extremely pettable cushion. I also have a fair number of bits of yarn leftover that I don’t have a clue what to do with. So if you have a suggestion, let me know!

Home Decor

You may have read in Shrug? that I have been looking for curtains on the fabric market. On the first try, I went with my Dad to Utrecht. That time showed us that even market salesmen don’t like snow… Only about a third of the stall were there and it was very cold. We went back and forth a couple of times, with my dad complaining of a cold neck most of the time. At some point I convinced him that we should just get a bit of fabric for him to wrap around his neck. We found something that was super nice, and that I wanted to have. Five minutes later, my dad had an improv scarf and I had enough fabric to make some pillow cases.

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It look me a little bit of time, but Sunday morning, I figured it shouldn’t take too much time. Luckily, I was right. About an hour after I’d decided to start my project, I had six finished pillowcases. Granted, the fabric didn’t need to be finished, so it was just cutting pieces and sewing two seams, but still. Cutting always take the longest..

Anyway, here they are in their new natural habitat. I need to see how long it takes for them to felt up, because that happened a little to the scarf bit…

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Rocking Pillows

Waaay back in the day when I was still at uni, I had a fantastic Earth Science teacher. He’s a bit crazy, super fun and very knowledgable. He’s also known to fake his birthday on Facebook to confuse the world. So when I found out when his actual birthday was last year, I had the plan to fix him a gift. In the end I failed, but this year the stars aligned and all the things I wanted/needed were easily available.

See, this teacher has a couch in his office. He is (as far as I can tell) the only one with a couch in his office. He also wears hats a lot and quite likes rocks. Clearly I wanted to make him rock pillows for his couch. Last year I couldn’t find the perfect fabric but this year I found it, it was the right size and it was half price off. No beating that right? I also owned some clay that claims to have a ‘stone’-look once dried. This would be perfect to make stony buttons from, right?! Last but not least, the fabric was exactly wide enough that if I bought a 40x40cm pillow insert, it would fit exactly. I wouldn’t have to do a lot of cutting at all!

So off I went to make the buttons. They are simple round ones with four holes made by a toothpick. I made eight, because I figured on making two pillows. So far I’ve completed only the one, but I figured I’d write about it anyway before I forgot. There are four left over, and four on the pillow.

Buttons

Pillow detail

I think they look quite nice. The process was really simple. I cut a 40 by 90 cm piece of fabric, folded over the short edges twice and stitched. Then put pins at 8, 16, 24 and 32 cm along a short edge, sewed the four buttonholes and slit them open. I folded the short edge over by 20 cm and folded the other short edge over too, right sides together*, such that the width would be approximately 38 cm in total. Pinned it and sewed it. I turned it inside out and put pins through the button holes without the pillow in it. I sewed on the buttons in the right places and voila!

Pillow back Pillow

*The long edges were already finished in my fabric, but if they wouldn’t have been, I’d have put the short sides over wrong sides together, sewed the seam, turned it outside out  and sewed it again to make a French seam.

A rocking pillow! I hope he likes it, but if not, I’ll have a new pillow..