Since we are going away on a long road trip soon, I thought I would make the girls neck pillows so they would be more comfortable in the car. After scouting online for a suitable pattern, I finally found one that I thought would make a good pillow. K took pity on me because I am so slow and so bad at cutting and very kindly helped me cut out the four pieces of flannel necessary to make the pillows. We all concurred that the pieces looked like they would produce a too-low, too-skinny, too-loose pillow, but I decided to go ahead and whip them up anyway just to see how they’d turn out.

Pink flowers for Zoe, apricot fairies for Alison. I found the original pattern jpeg on Burda's website and scaled it up to A4 size because it was too small. And it was still too small.

These pillows are not high enough in the back or the sides to provide very much support for the neck. The neck circumference is also too large for the average person’s neck and the long sides are too thin so the pillow does not sit snugly on the shoulders. My mom took out her travel pillow to compare and hers is too fat and too high compared to mine. There are dozens of designs on the web that all look different, so I guess more trial and error are needed before I find the perfect one. For now, it doesn’t matter. The girls love their soft new pillows anyway!

The pillow that would be a snake.

If you would like to try making your own, you can use a free template like this (wish I’d found this earlier; it looks very promising!). Cut out two pieces in your chosen fabric, then simply sew the two pieces right sides together, leaving a generous opening for stuffing. I like to leave the opening on the top of the pillow as that gives easy access to each long end. Turn right side out and stuff generously. If you’re diligent, close the opening with blind stitch. Or, if you are lazy like me and know that the pillow is not heirloom material and will see plenty of abuse, just do a whip stitch. You now have a nice neck pillow for your next road trip!

I finally found the time to start work on the baby charm pack quilt that I’ve been meaning to try. I must say that arranging the charm squares is very much like playing sudoku! You have to lay everything out nicely so that you don’t put two of the same squares together and the whole thing looks balanced. I tried at first to put only one square per design on each row, but quickly found that it wasn’t possible, so I moved things around and sewed the squares together to make eight rows when I was happy with the arrangement.

A couple of dense spots, but I think it doesn't look too bad overall.

The next step is to sew the rows together, and then add the sashing which is the border that goes around the quilt. I’m not sure what I shall do after that. My little Janome Gem will probably be unable to withstand the rigours of quilting so I might have to send it off to be finished by a professional quilter. We shall see. Alison has already claimed this as her car quilt, which means that I will have to make another one for Zoe.

If you’re interested to try your hand at quilting, I’m using this tutorial and got my fabric from Southern Fabric.