License Plate Surprise

I got a great surprise in the mail yesterday. Jackie R., one of the ladies on the Country Heritage Quilt Tour I took in March, sent me three fabric license plates, two from her home state of Texas and one from Maine to add to my collection. It was so unexpected. Opening the envelope, seeing the plates, and reading the upbeat note within, plastered a big ole smile on my face. Thank you, Jackie! I will deploy them today.

I have a collection of these license plates along the walls of my sewing room up near the ceiling. I make no effort to incorporate them into a quilt: I just appreciate them for what they are and harbor no illusion they will ever be part of a quilt. I suffer no guilt about not using them up as part of my stash reduction. They are serving their purpose as wall decor with a memory. The saying on each is unique and humorous. This wall has plates from Kansas, Idaho, Hawaii and three from my native state of California.

The adjacent wall has nine from California and one from Nevada.

Over the doorway on the next wall to the right  are seven more from California, and one each from Colorado, Washington State, and Oregon.

The most recent four I bought are from my Country Heritage Quilt Tour – two from the shop in South Carolina,  and one each in the shops in Georgia and Florida. This collection bends my flexible rule a bit. Shops put out these license plates annually but to keep my souvenirs manageable, I try to draw the line at collecting only one from a shop and calling it good. I guess in the heat of the shopping moment in South Carolina, I could not decide between yellow and green and so got both. Occasionally I also cave and get shop repeats if the sayings are too cute to pass up.

All the ones already up on my wall are from shops I either visited, or bought from at a quilt show, or ordered from online. These final three from Jackie have a whole new reason for being there – a gift from a new friend! Plus now I have a reason to visit or buy from those shops – Mesquite Beans Fabrics and Sew Special Quilts in San Antonio, Texas and Cotton Weeds Quilt Shop in Freeport, Maine. I checked them out on line and all three look awesome. Here are their license plates newly mounted on the header board above my wall-mounted rolling retractable design screen. What fun!

For those of you who may be counting, the total is 33 license plates. Even if I bought only one yard of fabric from each shop (yeah... right... only one yard), that is 33 yards of fabric. But wait. I have not bought anything (yet) from the shops for my three newest license plates. So it is only 30 yards of fabric. Whew! That's much better.

NOTE:
For those whose curiosity I may have aroused, past blog posts about that Country Heritage Quilt Tours trip I went on are in my two blogs. The quilt shop visits are in DianeLoves2Quilt. 

https://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2019/03/people-places-quilts-summerville-sc.html

https://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2019/03/sew-much-more-savannah-ga.html

https://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2019/03/cinnamons-jacksonville-fl.html

The sightseeing portions of that trip are in WanderOrPonder.

http://wanderorponder.blogspot.com/2019/04/charleston-arrival-harbor-city-market.html

http://wanderorponder.blogspot.com/2019/04/charleston-museum-carriage-ride-bus.html

http://wanderorponder.blogspot.com/2019/04/boone-plantation-and-angel-oak.html

http://wanderorponder.blogspot.com/2019/04/savannah-historic-district.html

http://wanderorponder.blogspot.com/2019/04/georgia-islands-florida-heading-home.html

Themed Pillowcases

I am gradually getting my sewing and quilting mojo back while whittling down my stash of novelty prints, most of which were an impulse buy. This week I made up four pairs of pillowcases. For non-directional fabric they take ¾ yard for the main body. To whittle down my stash of 1-yard pieces, I use the remaining ¼ yard for the border of the complementary pillowcase: two pillowcases need two yards, plus contrasting strip for the accent band. For Halloween there were these two pair, witches and spiders, for a standard size pillow.

For Christmas there was this pair, fat sock monkeys mated with cars, also for a standard size pillow.

For king-size bed pillows, I made this pair with a beach hut theme and striped borders. Aside from being for larger size pillows, these pillowcases needed extra fabric in order to get the orientation of the print correct when the pillow is used on the bed. Keeping this in mind, I'd bought 2½ yards each of this and another beach hut print while on my quilt tour travel at Cinnamon's Quilt Shoppe detailed in my 3/29/19 post for Jacksonville, Florida. I also needed to take care that the border was added on opposite sides of the main body otherwise one pillow would be upside down and one right side up when the striped band on each was oriented outward.

This pair of another beach hut print king size pillowcases also had a directional main body fabric but the border stripe was directional as well. I just happened to have this bird/fish/crab/hut stripe in my stash and it serendipitously went perfectly with the main body fabric. Here is that pair of pillowcases followed by a closeup of the directional stripe border.

My previous post had my hand written cutting dimensions for the pillowcases. I decided to formalize them in this post. Cut dimensions assume pillowcase will be sewn with ½" seams. By the way, queen size pillows are 20" x 30" but I do not have any of those.

With non-directional fabric for a standard size pillow (20" x 26"):

Cut the main body 27"along the grain x 41" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs ¾ yard.

With directional fabric for a standard size pillow (20" x 26") :

Cut the main body 41" along the grain x 27" slightly more than half the WOF. The 41" still wraps around the pillow but now the print will not runs sideways when it is on the bed. Main body needs 1¼ yard to accommodate the 41".

With non-directional fabric for a king size pillow (20" x 36"):

Cut the main body 37"along the grain x 41" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs 1⅛ yards to accommodate 37" but in a pinch, 1 yard will do and you can compensate with a slightly wider border if desired.

With directional fabric for a king size pillow (20" x 36"):

Cut the main body 41"along the grain x 37" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs 1¼ yards to accommodate the 41".

Border and accent strips

Cut these 41" wide since they each wrap around the 20" dimension of the pillow with a 1" seam allowance. I use ¼ yard for my borders and 2" for my accents. For king size pillows if I have enough of the fabric I want to use, I sometimes increase the dimension to 10" for borders and 3" for accents. Somehow it does not bother me at all if the print on the borders runs sideways since the end flaps hang off the edge of the mattress.

I needed to tidy my sewing room to work on these pillowcases and my stash has now been reduced by 12 yards. Plus I am back into sewing mode. Yay, me – a triple bonus! Oh, I almost forget one more bonus. These pillowcases will actually get used.