We interrupt your regularly scheduled bag sewing...

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

Okay, so I've had two weeks to pull together a graduation gift for tomorrow, even had the materials on hand, and I waited until TONIGHT to crank it out. What is the matter with me?! If I show you this first picture, can you guess where the new HS graduate (one of my nephews) will be attending college?

My seven year old guessed that he would be going to "UNDergrad." Not bad for a seven year old...

So anyway, I'm making a pillow and blanket out of fleece, in University of North Dakota colors. I went to their web site and found the little UND logo thingy, so I swiped it, made it bigger, and printed it onto a piece of paper. I cut around the edges of the logo, resulting in what you see in the picture above. Then, to make the pillow front, I cut a big square of green fabric, pinned a piece of black fleece on the back side of it, and pinned the cut-out UND design backwards and centered on the piece of black fleece:

Next, I stitched around the edges of the paper cutout:

When you turn it over, it looks like this, not backward anymore:
Then, very carefully, and I mean VERY CAREFULLY, I cut out the green fabric which was inside the stitching lines using a duckbill scissors (shown in the photo below), because the right tool for the job makes all the difference:
I assembled the rest of the pillow (back panel splits and has a velcro closure, purchased pillow form) and made a double thickness blanket with fringe on two edges to match:
Please pay no attention to the basement stuff in the background of the photos...
Well, it's 10:30, but I have to get some laundry done before tomorrow so that my kids have some decent clean shorts to wear to the graduation...but here's a fun game... DH has been telling me that 6-word memoirs are becoming the rage. As an example, one he heard which he thought I might have written was "married late, two kids, always tired," though I can't take credit for it. This topic is going to surface in this blog again in the very near future, though if you have a 6-word memoir right now, I'd love to read it in the comments...no pressure...

Have a great and safe weekend!

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)