Lush Uptown, a Pillow For a Hunter.

This is just a pillow I made for my favorite Bambi murderer, I mean person who is OK with the fact that meat doesn't come from a grocery store if you really think about it.  As soon as I saw this print from Lush Uptown which seems to be a re-release from 2008, knew I had to make him something from it since he wasn't making it out for hunting :(

I thought it would be easy and fun to embroider around all the different paint by  number colors with a backstitch.

DONT DO THIS.



 I can't  say how many hours I spent just doing the bits that I did.  It's a hassle, all those little curves made my head and fingers ache.  I ended up FMQ more of it than I embroidered because life is short and I didn't want to die while still working on this.

The back is a paper pieced thing I put together, I won't admit how many problems I had with it, but uh... yay it's done!  I don't hate it overall, and screw it, maybe nobody ever made him a pillow before and he'll appreciate it ;) 

On the brighter side it gave me a chance to order a FQ of all the painter's palette prints which I'm a big fan of!

Trajectory Pillow

I'd downloaded Dorrie's altered pillow size (16") version/template of Megan's trajectory quilt after wandering across it on Craftsy awhile back and it felt like a "make a pillow day" so I, you know... made a pillow.

This seemed like a good way to use the Lipari charm pack of Oakshott I'd snagged from Contemporary Cloth that were in stock a few months ago, as I hadn't found any around Seattle to touch and look at.

Working with the Oakshott was nice - the fabric is sturdy, and didn't fray badly during the process.  It turns out though that most of these colors were too dark for my taste to show off their best properties in the gloomy indoors, but look at that nice glow in the sun! I still find them very charming and hope to get a pack of the Ruby Reds sometime. 

Trajectory pillow back

I used Essex linen in Ivory for the rest of the front, and the back is Kona in Iron. It's quilted with Aurifil, which is really starting to grow on me. 

The pattern went together in a matter of a few hours and then I procrastinated quilting it for awhile since we had some lovely warm weather early fall weather that I had to go sit out in.

I'm sure it will bug me for awhile that the fabric looks so much less fantastic in shade than it does in sun but I suppose it's just like my hair, which is always more awesomely impressive when it is out in the sun ;)

Another Paper Pieced Pillow

I've decided to stop counting the pillows piling up on my sofa, or I might find a reason to stop making them... Next on the docket was a simple paper pieced project, an 18" pillow cover to go over a boring pillow that came with our loveseat. Of course this doesn't match the stuff I've already made for it so I should work on my long term planning. I really LOVE self drafting patterns.

The shot cottons I have keep calling out to me, so I chose six different ones for this, and some Kona in bone.  It was pretty straightforward quilting, the walking foot for the neutral, and hand stitching in pearl cotton for the shot cottons.

The only problem I ran into is using the Pilot FriXion pens to mark for the hand quilting - it left pale markings behind it when ironed out.  They seem to be doing that on both light and dark fabrics now - I hear it comes out in the wash but I'm considering breaking up with them for embroidery at the minimum which is sad because they're SO convenient!

you can see the pale lines along the hand stitching

Comma Body Pillow

So much for a catchy title!
When I married my husband, part of his dowry was an ugly beige body pillow.  I don't actually know how old it is, and I don't want to, but he's been adamant about keeping it.

 For the last two years its been residing on the top of the loveseat in our computer room, mainly as a cat bed for our kitty, Ponzu. 

Ponzu really likes to lick his arms, and then move to licking the pillow, and that noise... *shudder*


I decided to discard the old cover, and make a removable one I can wash the cat spit out of :| 

My husband actually liked the bold graphics in the charm pack of  Comma by Zen Chic for Moda that I got earlier this month, and he rarely likes any fabric I get.  Since he has to see the pillow every day, it seemed to fit the bill.

The front used just about the entire Comma charm pack plus six 5" kona solid charms all split into 2.5" strips.  I quilted it with green, yellow and orange Aurifil thread.

 
 For the back of the pillow, I just used a grey yellow & white print,  I did some FMQ on the back, but the contrast isn't interesting enough to really show up well so you don't have to see it ;)  Most things even line up!   Now of course I have the problem that the quilt on the sofa doesn't match, so I guess that means some more interior decorating is called for.

filthy bastard

Finished Triangles Pillow

Seriously is it not obvious I love my pillow?

Oooh I love something I made, and the fact that I did my own template for it makes me a happy campter.  That wasn't so bad, a lot of juggling trying to make sure it was mostly color balanced, and trying to keep straight what pieces went where since I didn't number anything.

I'm trying to experiment with all the different types of closures I can find, so I opted for an envelope closure pillow cover.  I followed the tutorial at i'm a ginger monkey. 

 Headliner News from Blank Textiles
Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow Fabric - Herringbone 
Kona in some blue that I have a ton of ;)

I machine quilted it with Aurifil, just some abstracty-ish straight line quilting.  And YES, I did choose my text print placement carefully to include thunderous and cockpit. :|  I have the sense of humor of a teenage boy, after all.

Triangles Pillow

Inspiration pillow @ Kitchen Table Quilting

Still on a pillow rampage over here, and had this pillow from Kitchen Table Quilting pinned that I wanted to do something similar to.  I DO plan on trying to do some form of every pillow on my pinterest board and I'm making pretty good headway!

Erica has a tutorial for how to make her pillow through that link, and maybe I'll try that someday, but I figured I should instead make more work for myself and wing it.

Freezer paper seems to have lots of versatile craft purposes I haven't discovered yet, and I want to try more of them out.  I planned my template out on an 18" square of it, and  I'll make a second copy of it so I can cut it apart to use for paper piecing and still have a reference for what the hell I'm actually trying to do.  My lines are 1" apart from each other. I didn't plan carefully so there are going to be a couple of Y seams I'm not looking forward to piecing together, but I think it will be straightforward other than that.

That craziness wont be my color scheme, I was just having color fun to differentiate the general layout.  I'm thinking black, blue, purple and green.

Linking up to a Lovely Year of Finishes, I'm sure this won't take too long to make so I don't feel time crunched to meet the deadline by the end of the month, but it's counting towards my trying new things this year goal.

New York Beauty Pillow

I am not sure I'm getting any better at paper piecing, but I am getting more patient at unpicking tiny stitches!

Pretty sure I'd written about wanting to do some New York Beauty blocks from the QAL that Sara at Sew Sweetness did last year.

I was originally going to do four blocks for the front and four for the back but I decided to take the easy way out and ..not do that. A nice simple back was about all I was up for by the time I finished the front :|

I used blocks 0, 4, 8 & 6. There are tutorials with helpful hints, all of which I totally ignored.

I didn't expect to default to "the sun is yellow, the sky is blue" philosophy but it sure simplified fabric planning!  I wish I'd taken pictures before I made it into a pillow, it was much prettier flat.  Seems like I should've added a border around it so the blocks were fully visible.  If I'd paid better attention in the Flickr group I would've realized this would be a problem. 




I stuffed this instead of using a pillow form, and handstitched the opening closed.  One thing I DO need to do is figure out how to sew pillows closed so that it doesn't crimp oddly.

Apparently out of the many many ways to do it, I chose an option that wasn't any of them.  I'll be be resewing the closure when I have a bit of time because it doesn't look nearly as lovely as it should.





The back well...an appliqued sun and free motion quilted clouds.  Not too much to say about it *cough* I took the lazy way out, as an excuse to practice my fmq.

I'm glad I tried my hand at these blocks, they didn't scare me too much, and it was relatively easy to match the seams up (aka I didn't screw anything up too much)

Now that I've had a few more minutes to think about it I've realized a better option is to just  un-pillow this and turn it into a mini quilt for the bedroom. I have a lot more wall space available than pillow space after all...

sensed photo op, butted in.

Kaffe Collective Pillow

I am a super lucky person in all aspects of my life, tis true! I won a mini charm pack of fabrics from the Kaffe Collective at Fabric Fascination's blog. I got my choice of 4 different color schemes, and opted for the hot, maybe because it's winter maybe because I love shiny bright things, I'm not sure. I LOVE Kaffe, especially my bathrobe I made with a millefore print of his.

I was trying to figure out just what to do with 2.5" squares for a quilt, but gave up and went to my pinterest pillow board and found a couple patterns I loved and wanted to try and decided to go with that instead, I have a goal of making every single pillow in the world by the end of the year, after all!

Inspiration pillows

One side is a HST triangle pillow inspired by this one from During Quiet Time's blog.

The other side is a HST with a twist pillow pattern from the Plum and June blog.

Is there NOTHING half square triangles cant accomplish?!??!  I think not!




Making half square triangles out of 2.5 inch squares is a bit tedious, I admit.  I didn't spend excessive time worrying about trimming and lining things up perfectly on the front.  Machine stitched both sides with some pale yellow Aurifil.

Do I need to admit the one side looks better the further away you stand from it? Shhh, I like to do that and pretend I'm on a tropical holiday.  I DO think the first side is a wee bit ugly close up, and I don't care :D  One more pillow accomplished!

(seriously I need to start taking things outside to photograph them in daylight, eh?)