Pillow fun

Hello hello!  21 days until Christmas!  3 weeks.  THREE weeks. I'm not ready. Still shopping, still sewing.  Still need to decorate.  I'm planning on putting away Fall and getting my Christmas/Winter wallhangings up this weekend. Sunday is supposed to be cold here.  Perfect day to clean and sew.

I was asked to make 2 more personalized pillows for a friend of mine in October.  I'm going to be seeing her on Saturday and I had to get on the task.  I love making these pillows and at the same time, I hate it.  Too much babysitting and too much stress on something going wrong at the last minute and whole project goes down the tubes. Not this time though and for that, I am grateful.

2 girly pillows coming right up.  I was asked to do pink and butterflies.  I think the girls are cousins.  One pillow is headed to Poland.  :)  Bet you can't guess which one.  LOL.

The butterfly border was also used on the back.  Happy to have these done.

And a pillow for me.  I need to get more Sweetwater labels to use in decorating my house.  I just love this snowman.  Don't know if I'm going to leave it on my bed, give it to Punkie to use, or use it in the living room.  Decisions, decisions.

I will have more to show soon. I'm working pretty hard over here.  :)

Enjoy your day!  Remember.  3 more weeks!
Jen  :)

Who? Who?

A few weeks ago, my cousin contacted me about making her granddaughter a quilt for Christmas.  We chatted some and I thought it would be a simple task. The more we chatted, the more the project evolved and I felt I wouldn't have enough time to complete it for Christmas.

My cousin's daughter likes owls and she wanted me to make an owl quilt for her granddaughter.  I've had a pattern pinned to one of my Pinterest boards for a while but never had a reason to order and make it - now I do.  I sent her the link to the pattern and she loved it.  I made one owl and turned it into a throw pillow.  The quilt will come early next year when I have more time.  

It is adorable, if I do say so myself.   :)

She didn't want super bright so I went with a gray slate colored solid; the pillow is backed in the same.  Other than purchasing the solid and the pillow form, everything is out of my stash.  I machine appliqued the whole thing, backed the block with some batting and backing so that the threads were covered.  I did a quilted outline around the owl with dark gray thread.  Could have done a bit better job with that idea but with the dark thread and dark background, you can't really see it.  

Once I send it off to Florida, I will make sure this is what she wants for a quilt and get started.  If not, there is super, super cute owl fabric at my LQS that I can get and make a simple quilt with that.  I'm sure she will love the owl though so I should probably start digging in my stash for some color combinations. 

I've been working on another pillow too.  Almost done with it.  It's my "test" pillow.  I plan on making a few for gifts so I wanted to see how it would work out for time and such.  I'll show you soon!

Enjoy your day!

Jen  :)

First Finishes of 2013

Howdy.  How is everybody?  Have a nice weekend?  We did.  No complaints.  Well I have my first finishes for 2013 to show you.  I need them for this upcoming weekend so I'm glad they are done and I can move on to something else.  I've already started cutting fabric for a new project.  I say that "softly" because I have no business starting on a brand new project when Swoon (and many others) are staring at me in the face.  But I can't help it.  I WILL say that this project is going to be out of my stash.  Except maybe for the backing unless I piece it.

Okay.  Enough babbling.  This coming Saturday I am attending my ceramics class holiday/Christmas party.  We do it after the hubbub of the actual holidays because of the hubbub.  No time.  This way, all family and other obligations are done and we can relax and just hang out.

I liked the ornament pillow that I made for another gift so much, I decided to make a second one (and I will be making one for myself sometime this year).

Now that the Christmas holiday is over, I made a second cover for the pillow so that it can be used in the Spring/Summer.

That's Miss Caramel in the picture.  She was sick over the holidays.  I'm so glad she is better.

I got the idea for the flower pillow... where else?  Pinterest!  Here's the link to the tutorial.  I modified mine to a smaller pillow.  But I sooo love it.  I wasn't crazy about it at first.  My spacing is a bit off between the flowers and the pink one in the center?  Yah, I don't like it.  But now that it is done and I see it with a pillow form inside, I NEED one for myself.  What I will do with mine is use embroidery thread to do the machine blanket stitch on everything. I think that's one of the reasons I wasn't like it.  The threads are thick on the applique.  I think the embroidery thread will look better.  Regardless, I'm not doing this over.  It is what it is.  This thing took me all week (and then some) to finish. 

the sweet backing

Tweet!

I finished my very belated birthday present as well.  Simple quilting.  I finished hand stitching the binding last night and buried all my threads this afternoon.  I am sooo happy this is done and can go to the recipient on Saturday.  Nothing like being 5 months late with a birthday gift!!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
Jen