Wild Oats - Pages

I'm having so much fun making pages for my Remains of the Day journal, hunting and gathering ephemera to combine into pages: scraps left from sewing projects, papers... whatever can find around the house. I'm determined not to buy anything but to use what I already have in abundance. I brought 2 Iris boxes, 12x12x4 inches, packed full of stuff for the book, and in one day... maybe 14 hours but who's counting... I made 42 pages. They aren't finished and won't be until I get back to my studio where I can root out more good stuff to use.  I cut full pages, half pages, and strips and sewed them together to make 11 x 7.5" pages. You can see some of them at my Flickr album here.

I told you that I made Christmas gifts for my family and now that they have their gifts I can tell you what I made... pillowcases.  I know, that's not very exciting, but these are special, made from fabrics especially chosen for each person. Our dog loving son got a pillowcase made from a fabric printed all over with puppydogs, trimmed with a narrow band of black lettered in white with doggie words (ruff-ruff- good dog - like that) and edged with black paw prints on white. My husband's is a route 66 fabric that includes Oklahoma with a band/hem of 1956 Chevrolets like the one he once owned.  My gardening daughter got  birdhouses and birds, and her husband got big mouth bass with spawning salmon and trimmed with pink roe eggs.  The oldest grandson loves camo anything and his is a batik print that looks like camo but feels softer with a trim of black helicopters on a camo background. 

I'm guessing you want to make some for yourself.  Here's what you need:
5/6 yard of 42-45" wide fabric - body
3 1/2" of 42-44" fabric.  trim fabric
1/3 yard band/hem fabric

I'll trust that you can figure out how to put these together.  The trim is folded in half lengthwise and sandwiched between the body and band/hem, like you would insert piping.  Sew them together. With right sides together sew around the side and end of the pillowcase. Turn the hem and stitch, and you're done.  Use the scraps in a journal like mine.

The pink batik with flowers is the one I made for myself.