Pillowcase Sweat shop

Our small city of approximately 40,000 has a shelter for the homeless, operated in a local Church, that runs from October to March and provides a bed and warm meal, etc. A few of us had the brainstorm last year already to make some fun pillowcases for the Inn. Since they get mostly men coming, we concentrated on more 'manly' fabrics, but we also made some others to give to Christmas Care as well. We worked over two evenings and got 21 done the first evening and by the time we finished on Monday night, we had a total of 47 pillowcases done. We think we have the pattern memorized LOL.

Cynthia, from Cherished Pieces, had a great clearance sale on and I picked out these four fabrics from the half price room. When Cynthia found out we were making pillowcases for the Inn with them, she gave me a further discount! Aren't independent quilt shop owners great?!!

Then, when I went to check out, she gave me these five BOLTS! of cotton fabric to use. We definitely put these bolts to good use! Thanks so much Cynthia and Bill for your generosity.

Gail went shopping for some floral prints for the purple bolts and we raided our stashes for appropriate trims and cuffs for the pillowcases. Gail brought her serger along and the handy snippet catcher was overflowing after our evening's work.

These were the pillowcases we finished after our first sewing evening:

The second evening we added some florals so we could use the purples for girl pillowcases for Christmas Care:

47 pillowcases finished in two nights!! We were definitely sweating :-)

A friend donated these kitty fabrics as well as the cats in the above photo (they matched perfectly with the tan bolt):

Chris ironing, ironing, ironing.....

Alice, ironing, ironing, ironing......

Jacqui, Chris and Gail after our first evening of sewing. Karen had to leave early, but she also helped with ironing:


Sleep Well!

Pillowcases

Last week, Chris, Gail and I got together and made pillowcases for the million pillowcase challenge. Gail brought her serger and we had a regular sweat shop going! In one morning, we made 16 pillowcases. Gail brought them to Christmas care on the way home and they were happy to receive them.

Here's Gail keeping the serger moving right along:

Keep pushing 'em through there, Gail :-)

Chris and I kept the iron and rotary cutters humming and also sewed the band onto the pillowcases before Gail got them to finish the side seams. We used the 'rolled' band method so all seams were enclosed at the top. I call that method the 'sausage' method since the top looks like a sausage when it's all rolled inside. You could hear regular comments about sausages being ready to sew around the sewing room LOL


Here is a partial pile of the ones we had ready at that point:

My husband was home due to a snow day so he took a picture of us with all the finished pillowcases. Gail had made one at home already so we had a total of 17 pillowcases. Gail registered them on the million pillowcase site and has the number on her blog post. There are now 214,739 in total...long ways to go for the million, but everyone bring us closer!