Sew-a-Thon: One Million Pillow Case Challenge

Hey quilting friends,

Mark your calendars for the upcoming One Million Pillow Case Challenge Sew-a-Thon coming up on September 16th and 17th, 2016. For the third year, our friends at American Patchwork & Quilting are hosting this fun event, and inviting sewists from around the world to participate.

Make up some pretty pillowcases and donate them to your favourite local charity. It could be a children’s hospital, homeless shelters, hospice case centres, or any place that you wish. Register your completed pillowcases here, so that they can be counted in the challenge.

Some fun ideas for you to consider:

Ask your local quilt/sewing shop to host an event, inviting fellow community sewists to attend and make pillowcases for your local favourite charities.
Talk to your local community centre to see if they would be willing to allow you some space to host your own event.
Invite some friends over for some sewing fun, make it pot-luck, so that everyone brings yummy goodies. Guaranteed to be an afternoon filled with much laughter.
You decide ….

Free Pillowcase Patterns

American Patchwork & Quilting have 50+ free pillowcase patterns available on their site. Shown below are: Pattern #25 – Pillowcase with Bubbles Appliqué Band, Pattern #32 – Train Pillowcase, Pattern #42 – Hey, Cupcake!, and Pattern #55 – Yo-Yo Band.

My Free Pillowcase Pattern

Last month, I shared with you my FREE pillowcase tutorial, made envelope-style. I decided to use that tutorial to make a pillowcase for this challenge.

For the centre of my pillowcase, I used the 12″ block that I created for my FREE Quartered Star Block Tutorial. For my coordinating fabrics, I chose the hot pink with red and white and the yellow two-toned stars for the back and sides. In my original tutorial, I used two different fabrics for the back, but for this one, I just used the one fabric and cut it at 20″ by width of fabric.

Since I needed the centre to be 20″ unfinished, I added 4″ borders around the quartered star block. I love how the hot pink fabric works with this.

I followed the tutorial and attached the back pieces, hemmed the edges, then stitched up the two sides, exactly the same as I explain in the pillowcase tutorial. I’m loving it!! I hope the recipient will too.