Frog Pillowcase

Whoo hoo!  I finally made something!  I finished up a pillowcase for my daughter, which brings me to a whopping total of 3 projects for the year (the other two were burpcloth sets for some friends at MOPS).  The best part of the project--besides how excited Danielle will be when she sees it--is that my sewing mojo is back.  Now maybe I can knock out a bunch of projects on my to do list.

In case you don't remember from this post, I merged two designs from Designs By Juju together and added some words using the font Puppy Love.  I stitched the design in a 5x7 hoop, then pieced a border out of squares that ended up being 3.5" x 3.5" once they were sewn.  I used fabrics from my stash to match the colors in Danielle's bedding & curtains.

Frog pillowcase & butterfly sheets?  Works for me :)

She uses a travel sized pillow so the finished dimensions were 20.5" x 14".  The pillow was just a smidge longer than that, but I didn't want to make the math more complicated and pillows squish anyways.

See, nice and snug

The placement of the squares took forever, ugh.  I wanted a different color in each corner, at least 3 or 4 squares between color repeats, and I didn't want a pink or brown to be in the center bottom (the brown would be overwhelming, and the pink would be too much with the pink lilypad above it).  Yeah, I nuked the placement out, but I am pleased with the visual weight of the colors.  For the back I made an envelope-style that overlaps. 

It doesn't lay as flat as it should, because of the snug size,
but there's plenty of overlap so the pillow doesn't show.

As for the design--the end result stitched out nicely even with the manipulations, so I am ready to sew it on some shirts for my nieces now.  I almost forgot to add an extra piece of stabilizer (to prevent puckering), but I stuck one on in time for the words, whew!

Closeup of the froggie