QUILTsocial Issue 4 | Page 52

Then I repeated the same process for the shirt fronts. Cut them carefully with scissors. More on that in a few minutes. Now I want to stitch the shirt fronts together. I could use the buttons as a way to get the pillow form inside the pillow cover, but I didn’t want the front to gape between the buttons. So I decided to stitch the front of the shirt closed. I’m a detail person so if I stitched the front closed, I would end up with two lines of stitching down the edge of the placket. So I removed the stitching along the edge of the placket. The one closest to the edge of the shirt. Then I pinned the shirt fronts together (matching the strips) and sewed the two pieces together where I had previously removed the stitching. The shirt fronts removed from the shirt The original stitching on the placket. I removed the right most stitching. Technically, the shirt placket looks the same, but now that right most line of stitching isn’t only holding the placket lining in place, both sides of the shirt are stitched together. A small detail, but this is the front of the shirt and two lines of stitching would have driven me crazy! Now I have two big pieces of fabric to make the pillow cover. One from the back of the shirt and one from the front. Here’s where I ran into trouble. I didn't measure. I went shopping for the pillow form and I was going to purchase an 18" pillow form. But I liked the quality of the 20" pillow form better so I bought that one. Now a little voice in the back of my head was saying “Are you sure the shirt is going to be big enough to cover the 20" pillow form?” I promptly ignored the voice and bought the bigger pillow form. The shirt fronts stitched together Follow instructions for making a cushion cover that you can find on the internet or at your local fabric store. The “new” placket I like to cut my squares for the front and back the same size as the pillow form. For a 20" pillow form we should have two 20" squares of fabric (the back technically is bigger to start since I’m putting a zipper in). Have a look… Shoot – if had of been a bit more careful with the scissors, I may have been able to eek out that extra little bit. But this is where the project gets exciting for me. I wasn’t too worried, because I could always get a smaller pillow form and I would be OK. Let’s think – think – think – what can we do to solve this problem? Just short of what I need! 52 QUILTsocial .com ● issue 4