Duvet Covers Made from Painters Drop Cloths

Painters drop cloths are so useful!  This time I was making a couple of small duvet covers for baby sized blankets, 36" x 48". The theme was Charleston, SC.  Luckily a local tool store was selling some drop cloths that were 4'x12', with care I could get both of the duvet covers out of one drop cloth. I bought a couple of extras just in case, because the quality can be inconsistent.

Using a theme of old letters and postcards with Charleston postmarks or addresses, I painted up some ideas, and then scanned them into my computer. I made them into a group of collages to applique on one side of the duvet cover, and stencilled the location on the reverse.

"Vintage"  letters, postcards and postmarks.

I prepared the layouts and the collages on my laptop, and it looked pretty simple until the printer started jamming mid project, and then inconveniently ran out of ink.

And the dropcloth pieces: I know you are supposed to measure twice and cut once, and I do practice that - but even so a couple of pieces were unaccountably wrong and had to be recut. (THAT is why I bought extras!)

I printed the collages on pieces of dropcloth or muslin, and appliqued them on the front of the duvet cover.

The pattern was really simple, barring any mistakes, each one was half of the drop cloth, which I then folded in half, and sewed 3 sides together like a large pillow case.  I hemmed the open edges and put together the closure using a 6" strip of fabric from the extra cloth.

I made up postmarks and used my birthday as the date...
I looked at old letters and cards online to get ideas.

 

Grommets and Ties

This is the closure I figured out; a sort of modified envelope with grommets and ties. The ties were made out of the double stitched seams I trimmed off the spare drop cloth.

It looks simple, and I was sure it would be, but I could not get it right. First the grommet tool was the wrong size. Then one of the grommets got smashed, which left a jagged edge, which of course cut my finger, and I only narrowly escaped bleeding allover the almost completed duvet.
It took me 3 tries to get the closure right.

I mixed in a couple of advertising images
I found from an old Life magazine.

Finally, after sewing and resewing, they were done, and I could wrap them up, add a card to each, and ship them off to their new home!