September 3, 2014

A Quilted Sham Tutorial

My daughter is leaving home to go to college. And I finished her quilt in time. She loves how soft it is and she loves all the pretty floral prints (Most are Holly Holderman for Lakehouse Dry Goods). To help decorate her new room, I used a pattern from Sweet Jane on Etsy called City Blocks. I love the lattice look, and all the negative space (white fabric) made it more appealing to my daughter, who has an aversion to “mixing patterns.” Most quilts are way too busy for her. For this reason, she has not had a quilt on her bed for years. –only solid color blankets and a duvet.

This pattern was wonderful. Not only is the design great, but it’s thoughtfully written and came together perfectly. I’m more of a novice at the quilting part– this is the largest size I’ve quilted–and Sue’s pattern was a dream to work with. I finished several days before move in day, so I decided to make another block to use as a sham. It’s square, so the sham is a “Euro” sham. This is really simple to do and looks great.

To make a matching sham:

Step 1

Make another block or blocks to have the desired size. I added borders, just as I did for the quilt, so they would match.

Step 2

Make a quilt sandwich and quilt the block as you did for the quilt.

Step 3

Square up your block to make sure you have 4 right angles at the corners.

Step 4

Make the back of the pillow sham

Cut 2 pieces of fabric. The height should be the same as the height of the quilted block. The width should be at least 2/3 of the width of the quilted block.

Step 5

Finish 1 raw edge of each of the back pieces. After finishing the edges, the heights of the back pieces should still match the height of the quilted block.

Step 6

Place the quilted block on your workspace right side facing down.

Lay 1 of the back pieces on top of the quilted block with its right side facing up, so the back piece and the quilted piece are wrong sides together. the finished edge should be in the middle. Match up all other edges together with the quilted block.

Place the 2nd back piece on to of the other pieces with its right side facing up, so that it has its wrong side touching the wrong side of the quilt block.

Pin all three layers together and sew all the way around with long straight stitches, close to the edges.

Step 7

Sew the binding on in your preferred method (there are so many different ways!)

Once you’ve bound it, your pillow sham is done. Here’s my daughter’s new sham after I washed it.

Here’s the back view ( I need to buy or make a bigger pillow to fit it properly)

On the quilt, I decided to hand quilt the borders (got tired of wrestling with the monster). I used pearl cotton and “big stitched” it. I really like how the big stitch quilting washes up. Here’s a close-up, though its hard to see white on white.