QUILTsocial Issue 4 | Page 53

AHA – there's a hem on the shirt – let’s open the hem and see how much more that gives me. Let’s not forget that I like to round off the corners of the pillow cover. Oh yes – I’m good to go! See? There’s always a way! This is my version of living on the edge – a problem comes up – how can it be solved? I love it! I wanted to insert a zipper into the back of the pillow cover. Therefore I trimmed the front to 19 1⁄2" and the back was trimmed to 19 1⁄2" wide and as long as I could get from the back. I was going to try and match up the plaid when I inserted the zipper. Opening the hem gives me an extra one half inch! Cutting the pillow cover front (from the shirt front) and the pillow cover back (extra long to accommodate the zipper insertion) Zipper inserted – not too bad on the plaid matching Yes – there really is a zipper in there. Machine embroidering the pocket Now it’s time to move to the pocket and the machine embroidery. Karen gave me some text to embroider on the pocket. I was working with a very small area (the original orange pocket), so I did a complete sample stitch-out to see how it would work for the size. I did have to shrink the letters down a bit so they would fit on the pocket. There are ways to print this out rather than stitching it out, but we're not there yet. When the sample was stitched out – I realized the pocket was too small. The embroidery would fit, but barely and that would make it look too squished. Oh dear – I hate making pockets, but looks like I have to bite the bullet and make one. Well – I had an entire shirt – so I just hooped an area of the orange shirt