A Year of Pillowcases

     Before my first grandchild was born last January I made a set of bibs celebrating the 'First' of 12 different holidays.  It was so much fun to see my new grandson with his bib for each holiday.  I decided he needed something else to continue to celebrate the holidays.  Since pillowcases are fast and also small it seemed the perfect thing to do.  For directions on how I made these see my blog here.

     I was having a hard time with the fabric for the New Year's one.  Everything seemed to be geared towards drinking a toast.  I finally found a New Year embroidery I liked.  I changed the size of the hats and added his name.  Then I found fabric in my stash that looked like a party or fireworks that I used for the band.  The other two fabrics were also from my stash.

     For his Valentine's Day pillowcase I bought the fabric at a local quilt shop and then found the embroidery design in my stash.  I chose a font that was similar in style for his name.  It was hard finding fabric the wasn't all pink and lace.

     This pillowcase for Mardi Gras was all stash fabric.  I had made a table topper quilt and napkins using this fabric.   The font here is Cajun Boogie.  I thought it was appropriate for the holiday.  I did a fancy fill with circles just to change things up a bit.

    For his St. Patrick's Day pillowcase I found some cute Snoopy and Woodstock fabric at JoAnn's.  Just a simple font and white on green for his name here.

     While I was going up to my quilt retreat in March I stopped at a couple of shops on the way up.  At Patched Works in Elm Grove Wisconsin I found fabric for several of his pillowcases.  This one for Easter I thought was cute without being girly.  I think the font on this one was something like Sweet Candy.

     The next one also has fabric from Patched Works.  This one is to celebrate summer.  Here I used the opposite colors in the band and contrast strip that was in his Easter one.  I used a color changing thread for his name.  After being exposed to sunlight it should be orange.  We'll see if it works since I accidentally ironed over the thread.  Oops!

     Here is his pillowcase for the patriotic holidays.  This fabric came from Mill House Quilts in Waunakee Wisconsin.  I used the Independence font with a star fancy fill for his name.

     Then it is back to school time.  The fabric came from my local quilt shop, Quilt Play in Grayslake Illinois.  The embroidery design is from my stash and I chose a font that was similar in style for his name.

     The Halloween fabric I bought at Sew n Save in Racine Wisconsin.  I liked the font with the ghost around the upper case letters.  I did do some editing so that the ghost and letter were different colors.

    Happy Thanksgiving here.  I bought this fabric also at Sew n Save.  I couldn't find a cute Thanksgiving fabric so I embroidered the cute turkey.  I had originally bought it from Embroidery Library I think.

     His Christmas fabric came from Quilt Play.  I used the Christmas Lights font for his name.  Unfortunately you can't see his name too clearly here.  I had to do a lot of editing for this one.  When I made the lower case letters smaller there were stray stitches.  I had to move them one at a time.  A real pain but it turned out great.  That is what grandmas do for their grandkids :-)

     Of course you have to have a birthday pillowcase.  I found this cute fabric at Patched Works.  It is an Eric Carle print based on his Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar book.  It was one of my daughter's favorite books.

     Then no set of pillowcases would be complete without some sports ones.  My daughter and son-in-law love their baseball and football.  They are both Cubs fans so no problem there but when it comes to football there is a little problem.  She is a Packers fan and he likes the Bears.  The baseball fabric is from Mill House Quilts and the band and contrast strip are the opposite color way from his Fourth of July pillowcase.  The football fabric came from Sew n Save.  Now you can see I didn't use any Packers material, though I could have.  My husband and son-in-law though object to the color scheme.  Not sure why;-)  I used the same athletic font for both pillowcases, the only time I repeated a font.

     This last pillowcase is the first one I made for him.  It matches the first quilt I made for him after he was born. 

     I hope you enjoyed this year of pillowcases.  I am thinking that for my next grandchild I will make them and give them as a first birthday gift, that is if there is another one.