Pillow Pop - Project #1 finished!

Amanda from Little Treasures by Amanda started a sew-a-long for the Misfit Quilters. She chose the Pillow Pop book by Heather Bostic. I purchased my copy from Amazon and I love all the projects in it!

She chose the first pillow is called "Life Aquatic" designed by Heather Bostic. (All the pillow designs in this book are not by Heather. It is a compilation of projects from many wonderful designers.) Heather's pillow was made with aqua and orange fabric scraps. Originally, I planned to make mine using a different color scheme, but when I went through my scraps I realized something. I think aqua just might be my favorite color. My blue bin of scraps was overflowing. Literally. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and just copy everything Heather did. No shame, right?

Here is my pillow top after I sewed all the squares together. I wasn't really sure about it at this point but I continued on. After I had the top quilted and it was assembled with the back I really loved it! It's funny how a little simple quilting can change something entirely.

This is my finished pillow. It now lives on my couch and has already been used in a few pillow fights and licked by my dog.

Next month (which is actually tomorrow, I guess. What happened to February?!?!) we will be starting a pillow designed by Katy Jones, who makes super awesome stuff! Want to join in our projects? It's not too late. You can join in anytime. We'd love to see your finished pillows!

Pillow!

I love Heather Ross fabrics, but I usually can't afford to buy any. A few days ago I found a pretty amazing deal at my LQS. I was browsing their sale fabrics and I found two Heather Ross prints from the West Hill collection! Of course I snatched some up...

Last week I had a special treat come to me in my mailbox. Miss Tula Pink has a new book and, being her #1 fan, I had to have it. There are 20 awesome projects in here (10 quilts and 10 smaller projects) and I have been dying to make something. *Sorry! I can't get my picture to turn!*

I decided to make the Vortex Euro Sham using my new Heather Ross fabric mixed in with a bit of Lizzy House.

This is the top after I got it all pieced together. I used a light peach perle cotton to hand quilt it.

And here is the finished pillow! I really love it. The colors of the fabrics go together really well, and it  matches my couch perfectly. I'm thinking though, that I need some bright colors in my life and I may need to make a ton of these to throw all over my living room in cheerful springy colors.

I Am a Farmer's Wife

There was some talk about doing a quilt along based on the book The Farmer's Wife by Laurie Aaron Hird. It started with Amanda and Angela over on Twitter and it grew, exponentially, from there. As of right now there are 368 members signed up on the flickr group.

I had seen the Farmer's Wife book before and I knew immediately that this was a project I could get on board with. It was only 2 blocks per week, so not too overwhelming. AND it would challenge me to try techniques and make blocks I would never have tried on my own. I was the 5th person to sign up in the flickr group, and I ordered my book right away. Unfortunately, I was so excited about the great price I found for the book that I ordered it before I realized it was coming from the UK and it would take 2 weeks to get to me!

The book finally arrived two days ago and I was anxious to get started on my blocks.

My printer is on the fritz at the moment so I loaded up the kiddos and took my book down to Kinko's to print out the templates so I could get started. To be honest, I was rather unhappy with this part of my experience. I knew there would be quite a few templates. I mean, I am making 111 blocks, but when the guy told me it printed 130 pages, I was like "WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?!" Seriously. Every single template (even the 1.5 inch square) is printed on it's very own piece of paper *. Many of the templates are not even necessary. I mean, do I really need a template to cut a 3" x 1.5" rectangle? Not really. No measurements are given in the book however, which makes every template required unless you are good at quilter math - and I am not. I kept thinking there is no possible way that the author of this book was an actual farmer's wife, for they would never be so wasteful. I thought for sure that I was so turned of by this lack of concern for the welfare of trees that I would be angry the entire year it would take me to make this quilt. Until I made my first block...

The fabric I chose for my blocks is Hope Valley by Denyse Schmidt. I decided to suck up my frustration and start cutting. I had 3 weeks of catching up to do so I had 6 blocks to make.

After I had my first block sewn together, I was over the bad feelings I had regarding this book. It was so pretty that I just couldn't be mad anymore. It took me 2 days to complete my first 6 blocks, and I couldn't be happier with how they're turning out.

 Block 1

 Block 2

 Block 3

 Block 4

 Block 5

 Block 6

I decided to make the king-sized version of the quilt, which will bump me up to 145 blocks. I plan to use it for my own bed and think I may even splurge a bit to have it professionally quilted by a longarm quilter.

* I did find out later that there are places online that you can print out the templates using FAR less paper. It doesn't do me any good now, but hopefully others will know about this and save some money, and trees.

Selina