A Busy Summer, and Some New Pillows

Summers are pretty busy around here... camp, beach trips, fairs, swimming, birthday parties, yard work, construction projects, friends and family visiting from out of town, brew fests. You get the picture. It's hard to fit sewing into that schedule - but surprisingly I have found some time.

I tend to do things backwards. We (ok, I) decided to re-do our family room. This involved some demo, some wall building, and dry walling. Really, I had the vision in my head awhile ago, so I decided to make some throw pillows for our newly revamped space before I started the revamping.


I wanted to use these pillow to try out mini-samples for some quilts I have in my head. The first one is the squares in descending sizes, I have a plan for a twin quilt with a similar pattern (in much different colors).


The second was this apple core pattern. Which I have to say was kind of a beast to sew together. (I'm new at curves.) It turned out looking fine, but I quilted the heck out of it. I think I will not want to deal with a whole quilt of apple cores.


I backed them both in chocolate Alexander Henry Heath, which I love. I also quilted the back which gives them such a nice sturdiness and texture. I'll make 2 more in these colors for our final family room re-do. I think maybe a tumbler pattern, and maybe something else with curves?

I really love my new pillows!

Pillows are great little projects, I love the sense of accomplishment I get from finishing something. I did the square one in 1 day, while wrangling the kiddos - and the apple core took maybe 2 or 3 days between kid antics.

Hope you're all enjoying your summer!!

Cheers, Jill

Holiday Gift Giving

Yes, I know that the Holidays are LONG over, but I did manage to take some pics of pillows that I gave as gifts, and wanted to share. Way back in August I took this class which was taught by Elizabeth on free motion quilting. I wanted to practice what I learned so that I didn't lose it. I ended up deciding to make pillows for a bunch of people on my gift list so that I could get a lot of quilting time in. I think it really helped, I got way more confident with free motion. Now I just need to get up the courage to do it on a whole quilt...



Plus - everyone can use a another pillow, right? Also, please try to ignore that huge mess in the background and all the unfinished walls with no trim. Cheers all!

Happy Birthday to Carla!

I love Carla! She lives next door to me, you can't really choose your neighbors, but if you could I would have definitely chosen Carla! She's a very cheerful, inspiring Momma of 2(!) teenage girls, leader of a household and Social Worker. On top of all that, she's just f-in awesome and I love hanging out with her. Anyway, I made her this pillow last week. At least I'm pretty sure I did, I'm having periods of amnesia due to my seizure, and I'm now only partially remembering making this. It's definitely fabric from my cabinet though :)

Hope all you NW'ers are enjoying the wonderful sunny warm day, as we're enjoying it, I'm thinking of all the people suffering in Japan.

A Girly Birthday Pillow

Initially I wasn't sure what I'd use these fabrics for. I liked them, but they weren't my usual 'style' (whatever that is!). This week I knew I had to make a birthday pillow for a very special (and girly) 7 year old. As I was going through my stash looking for pink and purple I came across this stack (I believe it's Remix by Robert Kaufman Fabrics), and I knew this is what it was meant for.


I didn't have a plan when I started this, and I didn't have much time. I just started sewing random widths of the print strips to 1" white strips. When I finished that I wasn't in love with it, so I started cutting that up and sewing it back together all flipped around, and this is how it ended up. I actually really like it and think it's a pretty fun pattern.

I almost free-motioned it. Almost. I chickened out though. I really need to get back to Christina's free-motion quilt along so I can boost my confidence a bit. I decided to just do diagonal lines at random distances apart. I like it, I think it works for the pillow, and it went REALLY quick.

The back is a simple envelope closure. I love the striped binding on this. I just love striped bindings in general. Well, it's a sunny day here in P-town, probably not many of those left, I'd better go enjoy it. Or clean up my garden...