In January 2018, I finished the second of two piecework pillowcases that I had planned. See Part 1 for the first one.

I started making this apron in April of last year and finished that July, so this post is long overdue. The next several posts will be too. I wanted an apron so I could stop getting oil and flour all over my other clothes while cooking. Naturally, I made something way fancier than any everyday clothes I have. All the floss is DMC 6-strand cotton. Since the DMC website makes it so difficult to look up color names by number, I used this handy color chart from a little Slovakian embroidery supply shop’s website to find them.Read more

When we moved into our current place, we were pretty slow about getting living room furniture, so I thought I’d made some big floor pillows to sit on. I went with a pieced design because I love the look of patchwork quilts, but I’m not a fan of how stiff they are compared to the ultra-squishy fleece blankets I’m used to. Here’s the finished piece. The pillow is a 24 x 24” square down pillow from fabric.com, and the fabric is a “linen-look” blend from Jo-ann.Read more

After living in one place for over a year, we’ve accumulated a bunch of video adaptor cables and other small dongles and dongle-like objects. Usually they end up scattered across the floor and stuck between couch cushions, so I decided to get a basket for them to live in. I didn’t like any of the ones I found at Target, so I figured I could make one out of paper. This way I’d avoid buying another soulless plastic thing or piece of overpriced lacquered wicker.Read more

Here’s a little pencil case I made for home, since I lost the one I’ve been using for years. It has a linen shell and muslin lining. Yes, I love lined pouches. I wanted this to fit a good handful of writing and drawing tools. The longest implement I ever carry is a fresh 7” wooden pencil, so I sized it to fit one of those. The scale on the cutting mat is 1” square.Read more