Four Pillows Plumping.....

Finished up my four Christmas Tree Pillows.



I was really happy with how my zippers turned out.

And then stuffed with down pillow forms from Crate and Barrel. At only $12 for the 20" inserts, they're a great deal - and very nice!



I try to stay out of the Crate and Barrel Outlet so close to my house. I can't always resist the treasures one can find there.



Amazingly, I didn't buy one thing off that wall of Marimekko.  But I know where I'm going to my next quilt back!

Two Done : now the super scary part!

Two are done!



I usually prefer to hand stitch the back of the binding down, but I machine stitch on pillows. It just seems like they need to be stronger - with fluffing and lounging pulling on the edges so much.

I stitch from the back side, with white or whatever matches in the bobbin. This is what the front ends up looking like. A line - but nice and neat.



I'm going to give them all a light soak before stuffing and gifting. See all that red?! Hopefully you don't hear screaming when they get dunked. I'm using for-darks Woolite, cold water, and a color catcher in a big bowl.

Wish me luck!

edit:  Hurray!!  Thank you Kona, you're awesome!  Not a drip of red came off that huge red back - the water was clear and the color catcher totally white.  That Kona red held up perfectly!


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Quilt Math Gone Wrong

I was so happy.

The Christmas Tree pillows are nearly done. Just the binding for each. And as I cut the fabric strips, I was so pleased that they would only need one cut WOF for each pillow.

How nice it was to not be joining long strips of binding. No extra seams along the way. I was even going to post about how awesome pillows are to make, as they only need one little strip of binding.



I seriously sat down and stitched to the first corner, turned, and was confused as to why my tail was so short.

Doh! A 20" pillow will not be covered by 42" of binding. I CAN NOT believe I got that far before realizing my ridiculous math error.  And math is my Thing!!

Don't you hate it when you're so sure of the plan, and then it's completely wrong!

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Choices, Choices

My mom really liked the Christmas Tree pillows I made as gifts for Becket's teachers last year.  So she asked if I could make one for her.

Kati's tutorial is great, and they're so fun to make, I figured I would give my mom a choice.  So I made as many as I had large paper for at the moment.  The tree production really is kind of addictive pulling treasured bits of green and red from the scrap bins.  Love hanging them up on my magnetic inspiration board.



Now I have a little pillow production line going for the four trees - four tiny 3" finished stars that will top them off.  Such fun!

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Cathedral Windows Tutorial : Wing It OCD

[Moda's Bakeshop changed since it was published - I will post the tutorial here on my blog once I can re-create it!]

Finally, my Cathedral Windows tutorial is live - I've been patiently waiting my turn!  

I made a fun pair of pillows.

I was tempted to name my project: Just Wing It {NOT!} 

I got to use the fabulous new MoMo line Just Wing It, but as is most of my quilting, the cathedral windows border on OCD - the furthest possible thing from winging it. 

Optimized result with an efficient process, that's from the engineer in me.  I've included all the little tricks I use to keep things square, flat, and pointy.  Exactly how I like my windows!

Here's a little bonus project.   Use one of your first folding attempts or the most wonky, extra window and two charm squares to make a cute pincushion. 

Jump over to the bake shop and say hi!

Florida Cathedral Window Gift

Another Catherdal Window pillow as a gift for my friend's birthday.  I'm definitely on a roll with these.

She was in nice, warm Florida during her birthday, so I was thinking of that as I chose the colors for her pillow.  I liked how happy the blue and yellow ended up.

I love it when my corners come together so nice and symmetrical.  It's so satisfying - like checking stuff off a list.

I added a fun little VW guy I thought she would like.  

And you can see in the center bottom, I folded under the raw edges on every inset piece.  That was a bit of a project, but didn't know if she would like raw edges.  It did make for a very neat finish.

Becket was funny and started directing the photo shoot.  He dragged over another quilt and arranged it on the couch, then posed himself next to the pillow.

Oh, and I have to link up for the fun pillow party!

So - I was working on my tutorial for you.  But then it got changed just a bit.

I started baking it......you won't have to wait too long!

The Snow ate my Days

Snowpocalypsepaloozageddonicane pounded Chicagoland and dumped 20" last week.  Lines of cars were abandoned mid commute on Lake Shore Drive.

The hurricane part of the blizzard left 4' drifts against the house.  We had to dig out before using the snow blower.  And the boys had two snow days last week.

We were cheering for the Steelers last night. 

Appropriate for all the Cathedral Windows I'm working on!

I finished up a large pillow for my Mom's birthday - but I only took this one picture!  Pillows are so hard to wrap.  So I left the insert out of the package. I'll have to get some good photos next time I visit them.

Confined to the house, I also finished up my February blocks quickly.  This one I paper pieced for a Project Linus scrap quilt put together by Sew Fresh Fabric.

And one last block for the Vintage Sheet Bee.  

These are going to make a fun vintage rose garden!

A Snow Gnome Pillow Gift

One week and my eyes feel great!  Just a little dry in the evening, but that seems to improve each day.  I'm glad I did the Lasik!

And the doctor gave my healing the thumbs up today, so now I can actually get back to my semi-dusty sewing and quilting.

But first I need to share this pillow from early December - made for a friend's birthday gift.

 

I saw the fabulous pillow by FlossyBlossy last year and pretty much went beyond inspiration to copied.  Both her design and colors were perfect, and my favorite color combo no less. 

You can see that I added a little paper pieced gnome on the bottom left.

Both of us love little gnomes, so he was a perfect fit.  I've used this paper pieced pattern a few times, he's so cute.  I always like to use some linen for his face.

I decided he was a snow gnome, and felt he needed a nice, snowy home.  A little pebble quilting was just right!

I wasn't so sure how well it was going to work, in and out of all those points.  I did a little mocked up test run and found I could control the circle size well enough to manuver around those stars.  It turned out great!

One last blogging picture.  

Mark caught me trying to get a good close up.

Teacher Gifts

Kati, over at from the blue chair, made the most wonderful Christmas Tree pillow.  And then she so kindly gave all the dimensions so that others could make one, too.  

I thought it was fabulous, and had three teacher gifts to make....so it was a tree factory here for a weekend before school let out.

It was great fun chopping up a bunch of greens and red from my stash.  I just made big piles of each.  

I think only one or two would officially be called Christmas fabrics. 

 When it was time to quilt the tops, I stitched just an 1/8th inside each green shape. 

Same for the wonky, golden stars on top.  

The white was stippled.  

I wanted to try out the little, loopy swirls that Kati used - I thought it looked like swirling snow - but I haven't done it before and didn't want to take the time to practice.  Due to poor time management on my part, it was about 10pm, the night before gifting, that I sat to stipple and bind. 

Luckily, I had already made the zippered backs for all three earlier in the weekend.  I followed this tutorial again.  

I named them "A Hobson Tree" after the preschool that Becket attends.  The ciriculum is play based and fabulous.  If you're a parent of small people and haven't seen a play based preschool yet, GO-RUN look for one in your area.  One part of Hobson is the crafts, available to the children each day.  They may choose to do it or not, and it is ALWAYS open ended.  They may have construction gingerbread men out to make....the brown cookie shape is cut and a whole slew of things to glue on and decroate with are avaialable.  Then they just go at it.  The best way to encourage their creativity, in my opinion.  What fun is there in a long row of identically pasted button crafts?  So, since I had fun just making the trees however I wanted each time, they had to be called "Hobson Trees".

One final note - IKEA has the most fabulous feather pillow inserts.  Available at 20" square and only $6.99 each.  They made wonderfully fluffy pillows!