First up, a tie for Ryder. I used a free tie pattern from the Purl Bee, but modified it to make the base of the tie a more traditional width (the original pattern will make a skinny tie).
Sewn gift number two is a set of pillow cases for my brother- and sister-in-law. I designed fabric for their pillowcases and had it printed at Spoonflower. This was my first time using Spoonflower, even though I’ve had an account there for a couple of years. I was really happy with how the fabric turned out.
My brother-in-law is quite into bicycling, and his wife is riding more and more, too. For their wedding, they used a cute tandem bike stamp for their invitations, name cards, and thank you notes. So Ryder and I decided the perfect Christmas gift would be a set of tandem bike pillowcases.
I scanned in the tandem bike from a thank you note they had sent us, and that’s the small bike you see repeating across the fabric in varying shades.
The large bike started out as a photo of a tandem bike, and I did a bunch of crazy stuff to it in Photoshop to turn it into the line art that we ended up using. The most difficult part of all this was figuring out how to adjust the design so the seam allowances didn’t interrupt the design. In the end, I repeated the design for 1″ along all the seam allowances so that once sewn together, the design would line up more or less perfectly. Turns out it doesn’t really matter since once you put pillows in the cases, you can’t see exactly what’s happening at the seam allowances anyway. =)
Pingback: Handmade Christmas: This and That | La Casa de Crafts