Wellington Park Pillow

I've been busy sewing I just cannot show you anything!  We're having another LVMQG retreat and I'm making stuff for our Secret Quilter swap.   If I post anything it will give it away!

This is a block from the Wellington Park quilt pattern by Elizabeth Hartman.  You can find the pattern here.  I actually made this block last year but forgot to post about and forgot to take completed photos!

I just made one block and turned it into a pillow for a friend that has a blue/yellow/tan living room.  I used mostly Picnic Parade (her favorite prints) by Jeanean Morrison.

I quilted the front in a diagonal pattern.... here is the back of it so you can see the pattern.

...and embroidered their names on the back to personalize it.

A Wedding Gift

My uncle was recently reintroduced to his college sweetheart. She looked him up one day out of the blue, they started talking, both happened to be single, and then immediately picked back up where they left off 40 years ago.

So he called me, *ahem* his favorite niece *ahem*, to let me know they were flying out to Vegas to get married.

I woke up one morning with an idea and lots of motivation to make a embroidered pillow as a wedding gift to them. I Facetime'd with my mom all day as she helped me come up with a design and we chatted all day while I sewed. (seriously how awesome is video chat for keeping in contact?)

Since I didn't know what exactly what their future decor will look like, I went with a mix of grays and browns. This is normally a big no-no in my color selection as I never mix blacks with browns EVER. I was a bit concerned when I pulled the fabrics but I just went with it reminding myself that it'll be fine! I also learned I own very few brown prints. My brown phase ended like 6 years ago.

First things first, I embroidered a center block with their name and oh-so-special date. I wanted to use this as a focus. Then I cut out a bunch of triangles and started piecing them together to add a border.

After I had it all assembled I was a bit sad that the middle was too plain. I pushed ahead anyways and finished the pillow. After I finished sewing it all together and adding the brown binding I was still sad about the middle so I finagled it around enough to get the needle back under the center and added a border. Then I picked out the thread and did it again because my dumbass didn't watch close enough and I sewed a small piece of the back to the front.

Here it is before I added the border around the embroidery:

I chose Sublime by  Doohikey Designs in Cream Swirl for the back and added the dark brown border for an accent:

My husband and i were their official chauffeurs for the day. After the wedding at the famous A Little White Chapel, I surprised them with my gift.

I think I even saw my uncle get a bit teary eyed - not that he'd ever admit it. They carried it with them on the plane home and got to tell their story about a 100 more times (my uncle LOVES to talk).

Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild Pillow Swap

Just an FYI... All of the pillows have been posted over on the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild website: 

Pillow Swap Reveal

The LVMQG hosted a Not-So-Secret Secret Santa Pillow Swap (as I like to call it) where we each picked out a fat quarter for our inspiration. My swap partner chose Joel Dewberry's Heirloom Tile Flourish in Amber.

In my previous post I showed you the fabrics I pulled to match.  I stared at that stack of fabric forever and had no idea what to do with it. Personally, I love the Heirloom collection and wanted the actual design on the fabric to be the focus.  I didn't want to chop up the 'Tile Flourish' too small or you'll lose those large super-awesome designs.  I added the solids because I add solids to everything.  The two orange Kona colors I pieced amazingly matched both of the oranges in the fat quarter very closely!

I did a 1" straight line vertical quilting to keep with the stripe pattern and I attempted to add some waves to the solids.  For the back I had a piece of Amy Butler Twill in Mint which just happened to match.

Sorry, this is a boring pic, but I always want to see backs of pillows no matter what:

I added an invisible zipper to the bottom of the pillow.  I just bought the invisible zipper foot and this was its inaugural run.  It was super simple.  (Always visit Sew Kate Did for the best invisible zipper tutorial!)

Now for the pillow I received!

The fat quarter fabric I chose for my pillow inspiration was Kumari Garden Tarika in Gem:

My swap partner Mary used Texture Magic and sewed around each flower.  So it puffed up like this:

Which turned into this!

It's really cute!  I love how the puffiness worked so well with the fabric design.

She added a zipper to the back:

 and some design stitches around it to finish it off:

(Thank you Mary for my pillow!)

Quilted Pillows

I have a couple ikea pillows covers on my couch that just about everyone I know owns:

Ikea Hedda Cushion Cover 20"

I didn't realize how popular they are until I started seeing them in TV shows and in my friends photos. I still like them a lot... it's just been a couple of years now and I wanted something new and -more importantly- something I made.

I've been eyeing the mod mosaic style for a while now (Tutorial at Oh, Fransson!) and wanted create something with lots of my favorite fabrics all in one spot.  Then as I went to start it.. I got sidetracked (as usual) and remembered I wanted to try some HST.

I randomly started chopping up squares with my 4 1/2" ruler and 3 shades of gray Kona and started sewing them into HST.  As soon as i had enough.. I played around with the layout until I was happy:

I was aiming for a 21" block for my 20" pillow insert. I came up a bit short so I added a gray border.

It was a very happy accident.

Seams all pressed open:

After I spent all night on that... I spent the next day (finally) on my mod mosaic.   I just grabbed stuff at random and starting putting them together.  Here's some pics as I went:

I added some Warm and White batting and muslin on the back and quilted them with meandering free-motion.  I've been practicing getting my curves more rounded and less jerky.  I used Kona Coal on the back of both with white threading.. so it was a little risky but I gave it a shot!

I was really happy with how my quilting came out!  I trimmed them both to 20.5" and added an invisible zipper to the bottom.

I love them!

One just disappeared out of this city on a certain carry-on bag...

so I've added another pillow to my future to-do list.  :)