RED WHITE and BLUE

I took two vacation days from work, so with the 4th of July holiday on Monday, I have a nice long weekend.  I am alternating between my slipcover project, my little basket quilt and cleaning up the clutter around the house.  With things in better order, I was able to take some photos to share with you of my summer patriotic decorations.

The Slipcover Diaries: Part I, The Ottoman Empire

My sons are on a trip to England for 10 days. All quiet in the house. It's time to make a slip cover.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Fabric is 50/50 linen/cotton blend.  Since I will want to wash the slipcover after it is made (for example after the cat throws up on it), I prewashed the fabric.

Mound of fabric right out of the dryer.

Pressed piece.

THE PLAN

 I will be doing some piping around the top and above the pleated skirt, so I need some cording for the piping.

Coming soon...bias strips and making fabric covered piping.

new sewing project, but it's not a quilt

No offense to those of you with plaid chairs, but I need to move on...I am so over plaid.  I have been wanting to make a slip cover for my plaid wingback chair for some time, and I have finally worked up the courage to do so.  I found a great tutorial here. 

Inspirational photos from magazines:

My chair

 50:50 linen cotton blend

And why not an ottoman too.  I got this one for cheap from overstock.com.  I know it doesn't match, but it will.

Wish me luck.  The last time I made piping I was in high school and it didn't work out so well.
p.s. I just sold a couple items from my updated website.  woo hoo!



Website updates done!

I finished putting items into the quilt store page.  It is very time consuming!  I'll be doing refinements I'm sure, but for now it is done.  Check it out http://www.annhermesquilts.com/

I've been working on the website

I finally had time to sit down and work on my website.  Before I could do that, I had to solve my iMAC/windows problems.  I spoke to several young geeks at different computer stores to figure out what I needed to do.  By the time I added up all the additional software I would need to make my iMAC windows friendly so I could edit my site, it was just as economical to buy an inexpensive laptop PC.  And so I did, and here I sit in the living room, watching TV and typing away on my Dell.  As far as the website goes, it is looking pretty good.  I still need to take photos for my "quilt store", but I made a lot of progress.  Take a look:  http://www.annhermesquilts.com/

More pillow and bolster case show and tell

I pulled out three cases to show you, one is a long bolster case, the other two are pillowcases.  I grouped these together because they are similar in color--lots of fantastic browns--are scrappy in nature, and date to ca. 1870.
The bolster case design simply starts with one four-patch and two nine-patches, which are then built out with strips to the desired size.  I love to make quilts like this.  You can vary the strip width and you can piece the strip to end up with a very antique looking quilt.  You will see this concept in one of my future magazine publications (probably early next year).

 Here is a sampling of all the fantastic prints in this case.  

 The back.

The next show and tell is a pillow case.  Again, remember, pieced and applique bolster and pillowcases are a form limited to the Pennsylvania Germans.  Our good friend the nine-patch shows up in this pillow case.  Triangles in the border on two sides adds a lot of interest I think.

 The back.  Check out that aqua color.  It really is 1870--not 1930!

The final pillowcase is an interesting one because it is made partly from 1870 cheater cloth.  See Eileen Trestain's fabric dating book for an example on page 75.

 The cheater piece is the section contains the star block and the paisley section above it then over to the right until you get to pieced one-patch border.  The rest is filled out with squares are various sizes to make the desired sized case.

 All cheater in the above photo.

 The back is fantastic  madder print as a central panel with 1 patch borders on the long sides.