2nd Try for Intrepid Thread Winner

Well unfortunately, the first winner, Patti, did not come back to check the blog and did not see that she won. I had no way to contact her since she did not have an email address in her comment. I did a re-drawing and we have a new winner for the Hip Holiday fat quarters!

Thank you to Julie at Intrepid Thread for sponsoring!

The new random number:

Comment #269

 The winner is Linda Crosby!

Congratulations!!!

Linda, I am sending you an email so we can get your fun fabric to you!

Thanks again everyone for entering and reading my blog and thank you to Intrepid Thread for providing this beautiful fabric and making the giveaway possible!  

Intrepid Thread Giveaway WINNER!

As all good things must come to an end, my first giveaway is over. It was a lot of fun and a great success! This post had my highest number of comments and the second highest number of views. I also have 65 followers now which is so wonderful! Thank you so much to everyone who read, commented, and become a follower! Thank you also very much to Julie at Intrepid Thread for sponsoring this giveaway and making it possible!


You all had some wonderful ideas for what you would make with this fun Christmas fabric. If you didn't win, maybe you still plan to buy some of this for the projects you wanted to do.

 

 I loved reading all your comments. You also had some great guesses as to that I am making with my fabric from Intrepid Thread. Only a handful of you guessed correctly. And no, I'm not going to give it away :) You'll just have to come back and see for yourself!

And now for the winner!

Here is Comment #201 (I counted 3x to make sure)

Patti, Congratulations!!!

You can now make your lap quilt. :)

Please contact me asap

homeiswheretheheartis8410@gmail.com

 

Patti, unfortunately, your comments did not leave an email address for me to contact you. I hope you see that you have won! Because I have no way to reach you, you have 24 hours to contact me (by 9:00am PST on 7/18/13). If I don't hear from you in that time, I will do a re-drawing for another winner.

Again, thank you so much to everyone and to Intrepid Thread!!!

Intrepid Thread Fabric Giveaway!

Welcome to my first giveaway!

I'm very excited about this! Back in April, Julie from Intrepid Thread posted on Facebook that she was creating a schedule of giveaways and to contact her if we wanted to host. I've been trying to grow my little blog with several linky parties and some blog updates and I thought this giveaway would be so great to help in that endeavor. I signed up for early July because I knew we were moving into our new house (photo tour to come next week) in late June. That would give me time (I thought) to make something for my house with other fabric I bought from Intrepid Thread and then I could blog about it as part of this giveaway. Ya, if you read my last post you can guess, that didn't happen because I tend to procrastinate a bit. I started the project. I just didn't finish it. Does that count for partial credit?

I will be blogging about my project when I finish it soon. But I'll let you at least see the pretty fabric right now. I bought Yellow Pillow Fort from the collection "In My Room" by Jenean Morrison.

I love the color and fun symmetrical pattern.
Any guesses what I'm making?

I also got some more fabric from Intrepid Thread but my mom is making this project for me.

We have a King size bed and none of the quilts my mom made me for each year of college are big enough to share with my husband when I'm sleeping fit nicely on the bed. So that meant she had to make another quilt for me(us)...darn! :) I chose the blues and greens from In My Room by Jenean Morrison. Mmm, I love it!

Probably my favorite print from the line--Blue Lazy Afternoon--although it's so hard to choose! I love how this looks like it was colored with colored pencils.

  Pieces cut to start making a quilt!

Here's a couple of the blocks ready to be sewn together.

I will post pictures when the quilt is done! I'm so excited. Thanks mom :)

 

And now for the GIVEAWAY!!!

The fabric bundle from Intrepid Thread today celebrates Christmas in July (and if you are a procrastinator like me, you may win this fabric and still have time to make something for this Christmas in December).

The Winner will receive 8 fat quarters

(one fat quarter of each of these prints pictured here) 

from Hip Holiday by Josephine Kimberling

You can see the entire Hip Holiday collection at Intrepid Thread's online shop.

Aren't the prints so fun!? From top to bottom they are -- Tree Shopping White, Ornament Glam in Red, Hip Forest in White, Star Bursts in Green, Star Bursts in White, Reindeer Stroll Red, Reindeer Stroll Green, and Silver Metallic Print.

How can you win this, you ask? Well, there are multiples ways to enter:

#1. Leave a comment answering this question: if you won, what would you make with this fun Christmas fabric?

#2. Follow me on Bloglovin. Leave a comment telling me you became a follower.

#3. Follow the Intrepid Thread on Bloglovin. Leave a comment telling me you became a follower.

#4. Like Intrepid Thread on Facebook and leave a comment telling me you did so.

#5. Check out any previous blog post of mine and leave a comment (on this post) telling me the title of the other post you read. Feel free of course to comment on that other post as well. :)

#6. Leave a comment guessing what I'm making with my Yellow Pillow Fort fabric.

Not too hard huh? Up to 6 entries per person. Giveaway will close at midnight on Tuesday, July 16th and a winner will be selected randomly and announced on Wednesday, July 17th.

Thank you so much to Julie at Intrepid Thread for sponsoring this fun first giveaway!

Throwback Throwpillow Thursday!

Happy Thursday! And more specifically, Happy Throwback Throwpillow Thursday! I think that may be the first time I've ever done an actual Throwback. First time for everything right. Well, this is DEFINITELY not the first time I've procrastinated. This blog post was meant to happen, in oh...uh...October. Oops. Well better (really) late than never right?

Back in October, I decided to make some decor pillows for our couch and bed. This meant fabric and sewing.

PAUSE---NEWSFLASH--I will have another post TOMORROW about fabric...a GIVEAWAY of fabric so that you could do your own sewing of pillow or something entirely not-pillow. And if you're a procrastinator like me, getting this particular fabric now may be just the right timing to allow for procrastination and still be able to squeeze in a creative sewing project on time to use this fabric. Hmmm....curious? :) Come back tomorrow and Enter to WIN the FABRIC GIVEAWAY!

Now back to my fabric and sewing project. These were my first pillows to make and I plan on there being MANY more. I mean, come on, you gotta have a variety to change them out and multiple couches, chairs, beds, you get the picture. My husband thinks that decor pillows are absolutely pointless and ridiculous. We joked about them so much before we got married, I would tease him saying there was going to be 20 on our bed and he would tease me saying he was going to hide them, etc. This video clip from Along Came Polly is so us but I'm the guy (but just the guy before he follows along because I'm not converting to anti-decor pillows) and my husband is the girl. So when it came time to write my vows, it seemed fitting to include something about decor pillows. In one of my promises, I said, " I give my word to agree to disagree on the necessity of dessert and decor pillows." Yeah, the dessert topic is for a WHOLE different day. :)

And so we have decor pillows :)

To make these, first I had to choose the fabric. If you know my mom, this task is not easy because she knows about EVERY fabric and EVERY website that sells it and EVERY sale and so the possibilities are truly endless and I have to say "stop, stop, 23 tabs open in your browser is enough for me to make a decision." :)

For the couch pillows (I will write about the bedroom pillows another time...don't ask when, haha) I chose Riley Blake Ombre Dots. I bought them from an Etsy store called Selvage123. We have a green leather couch (on loan from my parents until we find our own) and while I really like the couch's comfiness and color, green is not high on my list so it took awhile to find something I would like to match the couch and not be too green. And you're saying, "the only color on that fabric is green." True, but because it is ombre there is not an overabundance of one shade of froggy or mossy green. Also I love ombre and this was my first ombre item to own. So there, it's green without being GREEN.

I bought pillow forms at JoAnn's (they were on sale! each pillow was about $6.50) This picture includes the pillows for our bed as well.

I made an envelope pillow cover. There are several tutorials that you find on Pinterest, I just typed it into Bing and found this YouTube video: How to Make an Envelope Pillow Cover as one of the top results. It's only 8minutes long, to-the-point, and very informative. If you want to make these, I would suggest watching this since my directions and pictures are not as thorough as a video.

First, measure the pillow. Mine were 17"x17". For the front of the pillow cover, you will need a square of fabric that is 1" bigger on all 4 sides, so in my case, 18"x18".

For the back of your pillow cover, you will want the same height (18") but then 4" wider than the front. This piece should be 18"x22". The four extra inches will provide the overlap envelope on the back of the cover. Once you have the back piece cut, then you will need to cut it in half so that you have two pieces that are 18"x11".

Next, you will need to hem just one of the longer (18") sides for both of those two back pieces. Fold 1/4" towards the wrong side of the fabric and press. Fold 1/4" again and press again.

Then you will need to sew the hems on both pieces of fabric.

I used a zig-zag stitch right down the center of the fold to keep it all hemmed nicely.

The next part I failed to take pictures of. If my directions confuse you, refer to the video for the visual.
Lay the front piece right side up on your table.
Lay one of your back pieces right side down on top of the front piece. You will want to lay it so that the left, top, and bottom edges meet up and the hemmed edge is in the middle.
Now lay the second back piece right side down as well. This time line up the right, top, and bottom edges with the front piece. The hemmed side should be overlapping your other hemmed side on the other back piece. Still with me?

Now you will want to pin all around the outside edges to keep the front and back pieces together.

Sew around all four edges. Remember, that overlap of the two back pieces is the opening to take your pillow in and out so that's why you sew all the way around the outside edge. As you'll see in the video, she keeps the right side of the foot along the outside edge of the fabric.

Once you are done sewing, you will want to trim the excess fabric in the corners so that when you turn it inside out, you have nice crisp corners. Be careful not to cut your seam.

Here it is finished and inside-out. You can see the hem where it overlaps and is the envelope opening.

Flip it right-side-out and poke the little corners out.

Stuff your pillow in.

Voila! You just made a pillow cover. Pretty easy huh? Hey, if I can do it, you can do it too!

Here they are on my couch.

See, not too GREEN, right?

 Hooray for easy sewing projects! (notice I cropped the picture really close so you can't see too much of my new house until the photo tour next week!)

Remember, be sure to come back tomorrow for a FABRIC GIVEAWAY!!!

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