About two years ago I got a sewing machine from my grandmother. She didn’t sew any more and thought I could use it. I had never sewed anything before, so for almost a year the sewing machine just sat in our living room. (Click on any image for a bigger version.)

The machine is a Pfaff 230 and was built in 1955. My grandma bought it new that same year and has been using it all the time until she gave it to me. It’s powered by the foot pedal visible in the next image. The whole machine can be stowed inside the little cupboard, which opens up on top and in front and turns into a little sewing table.

After looking at the machine for almost a year I decided to try it out and start my first project. I sewed a pillowcase for my goddaughter for Christmas.

Here are the fabrics: I chose turquoise and yellow because those colours are used in her bedroom, and I added a little pink, well, because she’s a girl.

The printed fabrics are used for patchwork, and the light yellow acts as a background. I cut the printed fabrics into squares. Since the finished pillowcase was supposed to be 60 x 40 cm, each square had to be 8 x 8 cm, and I added another cm all around as a seam allowance, so I cut the squares to be 10 x 10 cm.

The squares then got sewed into stripes and these into the finished square.

Then I added a broad stripe on which I wanted to write her name.

I used the same yellow fabric for the back, which consists of two overlapping pieces of fabric.

Finally I wrote the name onto the fabric with a fabric marker and sewed the front and the back together. Here’s the finished pillow on our couch:

I used some of the scraps to make these pincushions, which I gave to some friends for Christmas. They were inspired by these Funky Chicken Pincushions.

To be continued… I’m posting all the photos in this Flickr set.