Pillow Popping....

Yesterday I decided it time that my tired, old, grubby sofa cushions got a makeover. For the most part prompted by how tired and old they look beside the lovely new cushion I made with my blogger bundle. So I got cutting and sewing. Love how quick making cushion covers is.

I really love the plus pillow....much more than I thought I would. The pattern was by Katy and in the notes she suggested a monochromatic version with different values and I immediately knew what I wanted to try. Monochromatic is not totally me, but the pop of aqua works so well to lift all the red.

This pattern is called Crimson Stones by Joan. The original in the book was made with Innocent Crush against Kona Coal and was a bit more dramatic than this version as you can imagine. But I made this with my blogger bundle fabrics and added some red centre squares, as my living room has a lot of red and I'm pretty sure it is going to work really nicely on my sofa alongside this cushion:

Both patterns are from the Pillow Pop book which is one of the few quilting books I own that I would like to make more than 2 or 3 items from. I really love this little book. There'll be a few more patterns made from it before I'm done.

Now to decide how to quilt them.

I am pretty sure I am going to machine quilt the plus pillow cross-hatch style.

But I'm not sure about the other one. I could do dense machine quilting. Or I could hand quilt it. My other blogger bundle pillow is hand quilted so the two would work well together if I did that. Opinions anyone?

And have a lovely, chocolatey Easter :-)

Liberty ❤ Stitches

I pulled out my Liberty pillow cover last night, applied my fusible fleece and auditioned some perle cotton threads, trying to decide what to use. I threw the decision out to my friends on Instagram and Facebook, looking for opinions, and was so glad I did - I got a few different perspectives and it made me think a little about it.

I started off with the lightest colour, outlining the Drunkard's Path flower both inside and out. Then I added one of the darker blues, to make it pop.

I just love the result (so far!) The stitching just makes the fabrics pop in all their delicate beauty.

Now I just need to decide if I'm done, or if I'll do one more round of the lighter colour thread. Opinions (again!) anyone?

When I'm done with this, I need to make the back. And after seeing Svetlana's beautiful pillow earlier this week, I know I NEED to do some piping on this. I've never done it before. Wish me luck!

WIP Wednesday

Well, I've been a bit absent from the WIP Wednesday club these last few weeks. Managing to post at all with how busy things are at the moment is such a major success, I haven't been able to manage a WIP post as well. Plus I'm not working on quite so many projects as I normally do. But I thought I'd do a little update.

Completed this week:

Eh, nothing really.... except that I was totally thrilled to win 3rd place in the Weekly Quilt Contest over at Quilting Gallery, so thank you to everyone who voted for me, I so appreciate it. I can't wait to pick out my prize FQs :-)

Work in Progress:

I have a few things on the go actually.

I needed a small project to work on to balance the bigger quilts so I decided to make myself cushion (pillow!!) covers for some old cushions on my sofa. I saw a lovely scrappy star block show up on a few blogs for Bee blocks and went and had a look at the tutorial on Moda Bake Shop and then made some adjustments for my cushion cover size and to make it a little scrappier. Here's the front pieced:


I still have to quilt it obviously. I'm a bit unsure about this - the colour palette is a bit more pink / pale than I intended, as I only have a small number of Bliss fabrics. (Its to match my Bliss quilt on my sofa.) But my lovely bloggy friend Susan came to my rescue today and is sending me on some scraps which I will use for the other 2 cushions and hopefully they'll all balance out. I do love this quilt pattern - would definitely consider it for my month in the new Bee I've joined (more anon!)

My Kaleidoscope Quilt top is done (or nearly!) Thanks so much for all the advice and suggestions re: borders or not....I'm still mulling it over! Hoping to get this basted and quilted and finished this weekend!


I also have finally made some progree on my bedroom curtains...they're coming along slowly but surely, when I get some sofa time for the hand sewing. This is the fabric I'm using - it a gorgeous, rich, heavy champagne/aqua blue fabric and will blend perfectly in my room where I have a feature wall in a beautiful Laura Ashley duck egg blue wallpaper.



Other Stuff:

I'm really excited to have signed up for some Flickr swaps - the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap and For the Love of Solids. Looking forward to getting my swap partners and doing a little stalking ;-) I find swaps make you think a little differently and force you to be a little more creative, so I can't wait. I'm trying to see if we have enough interest for an Irish swap in the Sew Irish Flickr group - its for a small item so if you're interested, please pop over and let me know on the thread!


I also signed up for Jenna's Sew Bee Blissful which is the first bee I've participate in. Its starting in August. I'm a little nervous but looking forward to it! And lastly, I jumped at the chance to join Jennifer's Rainbow Charm Swap Round 2 having received a lovely bundle in the post last week!

Linking up to Lee's WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced - go check out the talented ladies over there!

Missing in Action

It's been more than a week since I last posted.....can't quite believe that! I've definitely been missing in action this week. Not only have I not posted, but I've barely been online, have only been able to read a small number of blog posts and have done only a small amount of sewing. And I'm afraid that, for the next few weeks, that's probably going to continue although I hope not to the same extent - I should, at least, be able to read my favourite blogs! This time of year is pretty much my busiest of the whole year in work, and it doesn't ease off until mid to late July. That means increased hours, increased stress and - definitely - increased tiredness. Plus, with the long evenings, I want to be able to spend time out in the garden with the kids, and they're definitely going to bed much later these days, which means my evening sewing time is much reduced. So I hope you'll understand if I'm not around as much as usual and bear with me - I have no doubt I'll be back to my usual self by the end of the summer. So please - don't go anywhere, I'm here, I'm just a little quieter than usual!!

What I was doing this week, in between planning & hosting my little man's 5th birthday party this weekend, was catching up on some customer orders which I have outstanding. One was a sweet baby buggy blanket, and this little tag comforter:

The other fun project I finished was some pillow cases/cushion covers for Anna. These are to coordinate with
the quilts I made her earlier in the year. They measure 50cm x 50cm and I'm pretty happy with them. I found it a little funny working in metric, having gotten really used to working in inches, but I soon figured it out!

There are two to match the PictureBox quilt:

and two more to match the Sophie's Dreams quilt:

After making these and the Pinwheels pillow for my daughter E I'm suddenly addicted to cushions (or pillows as my non-Irish friends call them) and when I was ordering the fabric for Jennifer's Rainbow Charm swap I ordered a small amount of Bliss yardage to make some fresh cushions for my sofa to match my Bliss charm quilt. Can't wait for that to arrive!

I'm really excited about this swap. My colour is blue and over the weekend I was guilty of totally overthinking it - getting freaked out about shades of colour and how badly colours appear on screen - so, unable to tell if a particular fabric was blue or teal or aqua or navy.....and, obviously, it all assumed a significance beyond a few fabric charms in my little brain :-) After all the angst, today I decided to pop into the city and visit the only store that carries designer fabric here in Cork (and that's confined to a limited selection of Amy Butler prints and a small range of Tanya Whelan - both double the price I can buy it for online, of course!) in order to properly see the colour values. But the city marathon was on today (its a public holiday here) and of course, it was closed when I got there. Sigh. So I ordered two different blue fabrics online today and can't wait to get them to see which I'm going to use! One I have already and love but the print is a tiny bit bigger than I wanted. The other I thought looked about perfect for what I was searching for but I need to see what the colour is like. (See what I mean, TOTALLY overthinking it!!!!)

Ok, so that's been my week. I hope you stick around, and don't mind too much if I slow down a little over the summer - I promise I'll do my best to keep in touch!

I'm linking this to Fabric Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday and some other great blogs... Check out my links on the sidebar!!