I'm curious

Has anyone seen the Hoffman Challenge fabric or Deb Strain's new line Always and Forever.  Okay both of these were released in November, but in early/mid December we took the kids to Quilts Plus and let them pick out 3 fabrics for pillowcases.  Girl 1 picks out 2 of Deb Strain's line and Girl 2 picks out the hoffman challenge print.  I'm pretty sure the shop had pretty much just received both of them.  It was great seeing all 3 minds at work.  Little man picks out his 3 first.  When we first walk into the store I'm pretty sure he is thinking there is no boy fabric in here, so I take his hand and walk him into the back where there are tons of fun fabrics for him to choose from.  He picks out 3 great ones.

Here you can see his finished pillow.

Girl 2 is next to finish.  She is always quite quick and does love purple so her 3 include some really nice shades of purple.  The finished look is very nice and I can see why she picked what she did.

Girl 1 always takes her time, at least compared to the other 2.  She is certainly the most experienced at picking out fabric since she has done it a few times in the past.  She picks out her favorite color of course, pink.  It's not just pink, it's pink with hearts and love.  Certainly a great look for her.

I thought while putting together Little man's pillowcase I could do a little tutorial of sorts.  There are many tutorials for making pillowcases so I'll skip the construction part but I thought I could give some insight into fabric layout.  Even though since these are pillowcases everything is on it's side (look at little man's for example) but you can get the fabric to run the way you want it to.  

First lay the cuff upside down

 To be honest I really don't know which way to lay this out.  I see I did it on girl 1's pillowcase but I'm pretty sure that way just luck, I did have a 50/50 shot.  I'll give this a little more thought and come back with an update.

 The main body is opposite direction to the cuff, so direction is normal (not upside down).

 Here you can see both the cuff and the body run the same way, of course no one normally lays their pillows cuff side up so it really doesn't matter that much ;)

This maybe useful to some of you.  I worried about directional fabric the first few times I made pillowcases and even tried hard to avoid it, now I know which way to lay them out and also know it really doesn't matter.

Happy Quilting

CDC