Birthday bedding

A cushion and a pillowcase I made for my brother who moved to London in 2014. Not as colourful as my usual choices of material but he chose the material and who am I to argue!

Personalised pillowcase presents

Patterned, personalised pillowcases make great presents. They're useful, used everyday and everyone has a pillow to put them on. Plus they brighten up a bedroom. I've made a number now. I turned a patchwork dress into a pillowcase here and made some for Alex here.

I've made three recently. The first was for Pete's 30th;

The second and third were for Claire and Will who are off to Norway for six months. I chose some  material to remind them of London and England.

London town for Will

And English gardens for Claire

Here they are in their (almost all packed up) flat with their pillowcases.

And here they are in situ in a very plush looking Oslo apartment. Hope they're comfy!

A pillowcase under the sea

It's been a while since I've had my sewing machine out. I blame the small but very sweet ball of fluff pictured below who has recently come to live with us. He's taking up a lot of my time at the moment! However, before he arrived, I had chance to make a quick pillowcase for Alex as a simple Valentines present. I found the fabric in the fabric shop Beyond Fabrics on Columbia Road ages ago and it reminded me of a silly fish based song Alex often sings when feeling cheery...

After the complexities of following a pattern in my previous skirt project, pillowcases are deliciously simple. They don't even need a zip, just one side of the case folded over and sewn inside.

Hopefully I'll be able to get my sewing machine out again soon - when this little one  has got more settled in...

A zig zag pillowcase for Christmas presents

A friend of mine Tash Judd recently asked me to make a pillowcase for her daughter. She had made her a wonderful advent calendar full of mini toys in little red and green zig zagged paper bags.

She wanted a large pillow case in a similar design for the 25th - Christmas Day presents!

I found some zig zag material on the Village Haberdashery site and Tash ordered two fat quarters of each which was delivered in very pretty spotty packaging. I made the pillowcase green on one side and red on the other, with a fold at the top to secure the pillow (if it ends up containing a pillow not presents in the end).

Here's the pillowcase filled by Father Christmas;

And here's an excited toddler looking forward to opening them;

Apparently now every time she sees the pillowcase, she says a hopeful 'More Santa?'. Maybe next year Isabella...

Tash and Matt gave me some lovely chocolates and a Village Haberdashery voucher as a Christmas thank you. I've yet to decide what fabric to spend it on but there's loads of pretty options to choose from. Thanks you two!