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 :-)

Chunky ZigZag Pillow Tutorial

My Bliss pillow/cushion campaign continues this week with another pretty one to add to my sofa!

Here it is, in all its chunky zig-zaggy lovelieness:

I made this in super fast time using my Accuquilt GO! Baby to cut the pieces. When it arrived earlier in the week, I couldn't wait to try it out, having seen it and coveted it so much on blogs lately. And it didn't disappoint!

I got 3 dies - the Diamond, the Drunkards Path and the Hexagons - all shapes that can be a little bit tricky to cut accurately in the more traditional way and certainly very time consuming. I just loved how quickly I could turn out the pieces on the GO! Baby and had all the diamonds cut for this pillow in probably about 10 minutes, including trimming my scrap pieces for the die. I found it very efficient and the only issue I encountered was threads occasionally getting caught in the corners of the die, which a sharp pair of nail scissors beside me solved with a minimum of fuss! As someone who struggles with cutting the more "complex" shapes accurately, I am totally thrilled with the GO! Baby and can certainly see myself using it quite a bit. It's pretty compact too which is important for me as I have no dedicated sewing space and it needs to fit into my very limited shelving with the rest of my sewing things.

Want to make this pillow? Here's the super easy tutorial!


I used the 4 x 4" diamonds die for my GO! Baby which cuts 2 diamonds in each layer of fabric. You can do up to 6 layers at a time through it which makes for super fast cutting - 12 diamonds at a time in this case once I had my Bliss scraps prepped. I soon had lots and lots of lovely diamonds, precisely cut. See how perfect they look!


Next, I played around with the layout until I was happy with it - the fun part! I used a cream solid to contrast my zig zaggy Bliss rows. It's helpful to take a quick snap with your camera or phone so that you can refer back to it if you get pieces mixed up as you sew. Or if you have pre-school helpers standing by to "assist"!


Then, make a little stack of the diamond pieces for each vertical column in the order you have laid them out.


Take your 1st stack of diamond pieces and using a small square cutting ruler or measuring tape, and a water soluble pen or pencil, make a tiny mark 1/4" in from your top and bottom edges on the side edge.


Do this on all pieces. This will help you line up your seams correctly. You can, of course, eyeball it if you're confident in what you're doing but if you're a little challenged by spatial stuff like I am, its worth taking the minute required to mark each piece before you sew the column.


Sew your first 2 pieces right side together, matching up your dots and your edges. You will end up with little "dog ears" sticking out on either side.


Sew the remaining pieces in the right order and press your seams on the column to one side (all in the same direction).


Then sew the pieces for each remaining column together and press your seams so that they are going in alternating directions on each column to make sewing your column seams together easier.

Next, sew your columns together in pairs, and join the 3 paired columns to make your pillow top. I trimmed off the top and bottom to make quilting it a little easier.


I then grabbed a batting scrap and quilted the pillow top following the zig zags in the pattern. I quilted 1 line inside the seams for each of the colour zig zags, and then quilted lots of zig zag lines 3/8" apart in the cream solid, to make the colours pop even more.


Trim your pillow top and then sew on the back in whatever style you want - you could do an envelope back if you want to keep it simple. I put a zip in the bottom seam of this one. Put in your pillow form (mine was from a tired old ugly pillow in my playroom which I upcycled), place on your sofa and admire!! This pillow will join my other Bliss pillows and quilt on my living room sofa.


So, of course, you know what's coming up next by now......Keep your eyes peeled for the giveaway post coming soon!

Bliss pillow progress....

Thanks to the lovely Susan, I doubled my stash of Bliss scraps yesterday...even better, hers were darker colours and slightly larger scale prints than mine and I was thrilled with them!

So, I got straight to it today, pulled up the Sprocket Pillow tutorial and got cutting. Wow, what a great tute, its so straightforward and very easy - and such a nice result! Really pleased with this one. And I feel my colours and prints are much more balanced than the star pillow.


I really like the button detail in this one - and the scarlet Fresh fabric I used to cover it is the very last tiny scrap I had of this fabric - probably one of my favourites in the line.


I used a solid cream for the side, and its backed with some Freebird fabric (as is the other cushion) which I used to bind my Bliss quilt - its a nice complimentary fabric.


I also quilted and finished the scrappy star cushion. Looking at the V shape of the star points, I decided to try to echo it in the quilting, even though the star "V"s were not totally even. But I think it worked and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. The lines are 1/2" apart.


I put a zip in the bottom seam of this cushion and I made a silly mistake at the start and it took ages to sort it out. I had to put the kids out of the kitchen and close the door so that their vocabulary of choice expressions was not increased hundredfold! But it is looking ok at last!


Here they are sitting on my quilt - looking lovely together I think :-) I'll be making at least a couple more to join these on my two living room sofas. One will be zigzags, one will be from this Cluck Cluck Sew tute.... and I'm still thinking about more! If anyone wants to point me in the direction of a great pillow/cushion tute please do!!

Now, not having been online for more than 3 minutes at a time since Wednesday morning, I'm off to catch up on my blog reading!!

I'm linking up to the lovely projects over at:

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!!

WIP Wednesday

Well its been a super busy week round here, how about everyone else? Isn't the Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway just the best? I've had so much fun entering giveaways and discovering new blogs. If you want to enter mine, there's still time, you'll find the post here.

Completed this week:

Last week I was struggling a little with energy and ideas. I had a day off work on Thursday and just grabbed some fabric I liked, took out my notebook and tried to make up one of the ideas I had in it. It worked out great and I ended up putting it in my giveaway! I'm really happy with this little iPhone cozy, I'm definitely going to make more and even write up a little tutorial when I have a few things tweaked.

I had fun with some scrappy pincushions - they always leave me in a good mood!

I also made a pillow (or cushion as we would say here) with some leftover blocks from my Pips quilt:

This was another impulse make and my daugher is delighted with it, she loves the dogs on the fabric. I lightly quilted it on the diagonal lines using a leftover bit of cotton batting, and then backed it with some lovely soft red polar fleece for a really snuggly feel.

In Progress:

Well, I'm really excited to have finished my Pinwheel Pips quilt top. (Sorry the photo is so bad, it was taken in the evening and the light was really poor.) I decided on this layout because I love how it gives an optical illusion and you have to really look to see where the blocks are. I kind of wish I'd maybe had some more fabric to get a better balance of colours (I had half a layer cake) but I like how it turned out. I added the sashing to bring it up to a slightly better size for a child's throw, and really like the girls on the swings fabric I used, I think its my favourite print in this collection. E is very excited about it being nearly done. My lovely hubbie really wants me to quilt it with batting and backing rather than fleece as I was planning (he loves the texture of quilts and wants her first quilt to have that) and I picked up a pink flat sheet in Heatons on sale for only €5 for the backing - result! Maybe, if I'm very lucky and get some time at the weekend, I might just get it finished as I'm planning on light quilting similar to the pillow for this one.

Started:

I got most of the pieces cut for the next quilt I'm making which is a commission for a quilt similar to the one I made for Sophie a couple of months ago. It is a simple pattern of big squares intespersed with some 4 patch blocks. I'm sticking with red and green as the dominant colours but have some different fabrics and prints this time and I'm looking forward to laying these out, I love mixing up the colours and patterns to make the quilt really work.

Well, that's it for this week, its been a good one. Hope you are all enjoying the giveaway and welcome to all my new followers - please jump in and comment so I can get to know you!

I'm linking this up to Freshly Pieced as always, as well as some other great blogs.