When all was said and done with Liam’s Cars quilt, this is what I had left…about a yard of the blue Cars fabric in pieces, less than a 1/4 yard of the black Cars 2 fabric, 3 chevron blocks and a lot of embroidery thread! Listing it all makes me think there’s a missing character in the Clue game…It was Ms. Saffron the seamstress in the craft room with the glue gun!
I decided 2 throw pillows in the 18×18″ range ought to do it.
Here are 3 pillow tops ready to go – 1 extra just in case. I’ll get to that later….yeah….
Anyway, here is the Sulky thread on top and I used a cream Gutterman in the bobbin. This made the tension a lot easier to tweak and adjust for a smoother look. It still got a bit of pull-through here and there, but what are you gonna do? We’re not entering this into the Smithsonian, we’re just having fun.
It also makes the inside look cleaner to have a solid cream thread in the bobbin.
I squared it all up, and added the back. I decided against a button closure or zippers in favor of an envelope style…it’s for a kid. Kids roll around and smoosh pillows and my Alex has complained about buttons on bedding before, so I thought it would be best to leave them off.
I embroidered the back to match the front.
Here’s a close up of the Sulky thread on top and the bobbing thread on the bottom against the blue so you can see it.
I layered the back on the front so that the shorter part of the envelope would be on top when turned right side out.
I decided to serge it together. It’s super thick with the batting and again with the idea that a boy is going to be rolling around on it, even though my sewing machine would easily sew it together….I want it to be sturdy and hold up to big squoooshing and smooooshing and many story times and wrestle matches.
Here’s a finished right-side-out top on a finished inside-out top to see how it looks.
Here’s the finished back.
I made a fairly deep overlap for the envelope – again, with the idea of them being play objects…I know if it’s not deep enough, the pillows will squish out the back.
And….the finished top!
They’re about 19″x19″, which, with the quilting and seams, should comfortably fit 18″x18″ inserts. I used, as you can see, a star embroidery stitch. I have the Viking Sapphire 835 which is pretty awesome but she’s not a full-on embroidery machine, she’s more of a little-bit-of-everything machine, so corners were a bit tricky but I’m still very happy with it. I went for a simple Cars-LIAM-Cars embroidery motif in the center.