LMS

I get asked quite frequently for a tutorial on this little pillow which I made for a class I taught awhile back.  It’s gotten pinned and repinned quite a bit over on pinterest–especially after Joann Fabrics pinned it(how fun!).

Can’t take credit for the Daisy pillow–I received it in a round of the Pillow Talk Swap.

I’ve decided to offer the tutorial here on my blog for anyone interested in making one of their own!  It’s a super easy tutorial with tons of pictures–including all of the finishing details(binding/pillow back).  The quilting is easy to do & a perfect project for a beginning quilter.

Patchwork Pillow Tutorial

The tutorial itself doesn’t have the supplies listed so here they are:

Pillow Supplies:

25–3″ squares of assorted fabrics

1/2 yard fabric for pillow top backing and pillow backing or a 15″ square piece of muslin for pillow top back and 1/3 yard print fabric for pillow backing)

1/4 yd. fabric for binding

14″ square piece of batting

505 Spray & Fix temporary adhesive

Perle Cotton

embroidery needle (size 5)

water erasable marker

thimble (optional if preferred for quilting)–quilting can also be done without a thimble for this project

12″ pillow form

Enjoy!

Yay!–I finally get to share my Garden District pillow with you all!  I designed and made this pillow almost two years ago!  Yikes, I can’t believe it’s really been that long.

I designed Garden District for Heather Bostic’s book Pillow Pop–a book featuring fun pillow designs from over 20 different designers/bloggers.

The fabrics I used are from Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks voile collection and a tan linen.  The combo of the two weights of fabric was a little bit tricky to work with but the end product is so striking.

One of my fave parts of the pillow is the colorful hand quilting using perle cotton.  I’ve been asked often what type of needle I prefer for quilting with perle.  I use an embroidery needle–the larger eye and longer needle are perfect for working with the heavier weight thread (I usually use 8 wt. perle).

I finished off the pillow with a simple envelope enclosure but I added a fun little strip of pieced fabric to spice the back up a bit.

I’m happy to have my pillow back home after it’s long absence!–It’s happily living on my couch. =)

BTW, in case you missed the scrap basket update in my last post, they were spoken for in just a couple minutes after my post.  They’ve been mailed off and received into their new home where they will hopefully be made into something fabulous.

I do still have scraps that I will need to unload again sometime and judging by all you scrap lovers (myself included!) a scrappy giveaway may be in order at some point in time.

Happy Sewing!

Today I’m sharing another recent magazine project.  This is my “Buttoned Up” pillow for the winter 2013 issue of Stitch Craft Create.  It takes full advantage of two hot trends right now…chevron and buttons.  Plus it’s super easy and you can whip it up in a jiffy!

Did you know that you can buy fantastic assorted bulk buttons from the Martha Pullen store?

I had to take a screen shot of all these lovelies!–Aren’t they fabulous!  I have been itching to work with these buttons–so when Shannon, the editor of Stitch Craft Create, asked if I had any projects up my sleeve and offered to send me buttons to use for my Buttoned Up pillow idea I jumped at the chance.

I love the way it turned out!–a super fun and quick project.  I machine quilted my pillow top following the chevron pattern.  This was actually the trickiest part of making the pillow for me–some of the larger buttons were a little bit tricky to navigate around.

And just look at all the cute buttons–I love the little flower ones.  And I stacked some of them to give it a little bit more added interest.

My chevron pillow is currently sitting on this fun little chair.  This was another project I took on during my break.  I picked up two gnarly chairs from my local thrift store, painted them, and refinished the chair cushions.  Love the way they turned out.

I picked up the cushion fabric online here–it’s a home decor weight fabric by Cosmo Cricket for their Odds and Ends fabric for Moda.  It’s also available in aqua and in green.  It is a beautiful text print and was just what I was looking for–I may end up picking it up in another color way (or two).  This fabric is also available in quilting weight fabric–just as cute, but the print is much smaller.

If you’d like a Buttoned Up pillow of your own, this issue of Stitch Craft Create is in stores now.

Happy sewing!

Hello, Hello!–Welcome to any new folks stopping by and thank you to my faithful readers for swinging by my stop on the Sweet Celebrations Blog Hop!

I have been just itching to share more new with you about the 2nd Moda Bake Shop book coming out very soon.  Last fall, Lissa Alexander, invited me to participate in the book and of course that was a huge “yes indeed” & now I can finally share a bit more about the book.

Sweet Celebrations is a precut friendly book with projects for all of your favorite holidays.  And today, my celebration for the blog hop is Wedding!  Which is perfect because I just happen to have several wedding projects in the Sweet Celebrations Book…here’s a little peek:

I made a trio of “Love” pillows & a Wedding quilt using a.m.a.z.ing fabrics from Fig Tree’s, California Girl line of fabric.

As you can see, tons of great projects!

So, for the blog hop, Moda decided to do a little Q & A with questions from Oda May for each of the chefs.  So, without further ado..a little bit more about Little Miss Shabby.

1.  Do you prefer to celebrate with cupcakes, cake pops, or just plain old cake?  Hmmm…I gotta be honest I am not much of a cake person in general.  I can totally pass up cake at any event with no problem.  Now, the hubster is a white cake guy all the way…and let me tell you, do not mess with the wedding cake…in his eyes it is one of the key elements to a great wedding.

2.  Do your pets/kids/spouse help or hinder your creative process? Help for sure!–well, maybe not so much the pets…although she does make for cute photo ops(can you spot her?):

My daughter, Chloe was 100% the inspiration for this pillow:

after she showed me this adorable little water color painting she made:

3.  If you could have a quilt shop spree, which items would you snag off the shelf?  I’m going to go with future items because it always seems like I am waiting on a fabric line to come out.  So, I would snag some Honey Honey by Kate Spain(I’ve seen a couple prints in person and they are fabulous!):

And, I’m also itching to see Bonnie & Camille’s next line of fabric after Marmalade.  I actually had a dream about it last night(seriously, I’m not the only one who dreams about fabric, right?).  It was an aqua, brown, orange line–they were going a more boyish route.  And it had the same tree fabric in the line as Just Wing It by Momo for Moda.  Craziness, right!?!

4.  What have you gained from the online quilting/sewing world?  What a vibrant community first of all!  I think the main thing I have learned is to just go for it, dive in & have fun…you can do it.  Too often, I think we sell ourselves and our skills short.

5.  What is your favorite part of quilting – fabric selection, piecing, quilting, binding, and why?  Definitely fabric selection…I love putting together stacks of fabric…I mean, seriously…

Bella by Lotta Jansdotter for Windham Fabrics

I actually began purchasing fabric before I ever touched a sewing machine or knew how to sew.

Now, as part of this blog hop, each chef was asked to share a recipe with you that corresponds to their assigned celebration.  Well, if you remember my celebration was wedding…and when we think wedding, we all think cake!  Well, as we learned earlier, I am soooo not a cake eater, however…I have a favorite cake…and it is one that is requested often to be made by my mom…it’s an old family recipe for Oatmeal Cake.  Just thinking about the ooey gooey delight that is this cake, makes me want some. =)

There you have it–a little bit of fluff about Little Miss Shabby–and now on to some more fun…

It’s Giveaway Time!

To enter to win a copy of Sweet Celebrations and a Moda Fat 8th Bundle, just leave me a comment.

Comments are now Closed.

(*Note: Only entrants with U.S addresses are eligible to win the actual book.  Winners with addresses outside the U.S. will win the e-book version).

You have from now until October 14 to leave a comment–winners will be announced on October 19.

Be sure to hop along to all of the other chefs’ blogs on the Blog Hop to enter to win a copy of the Sweet Celebrations book and some fantastic fabric.  You will be able to collect all of the yummy recipes on your hop as well. =)  A complete list of participating blogs is listed here.

I am very excited to once again have gotten the opportunity to work with Stitch Craft Create Magazine. =)  My Fall Petal Pillow is featured in the Fall 2012 issue which just came out.

We all know that I’ve kinda got a “thing” for applique and hand quilting.  This pillow combines the best of both worlds.  And I always love working with fall colors–and that unexpected pop of blue just works so well in my opinion.

There are so many cute projects in this issue of SCC…paper, yarn, fabric, felt, thread…I think that’s why I like this mag so much!  It’s just got a ton of cuteness going on–and as a mama who loves crafting, with a 7 year old daughter who loves crafting, we always find cute new projects we want to try & new inspiration on every page.

Can I tell you how much I enjoy being able to use Flea Market Fancy for binding!–No fear of not being able to buy more…at least for now…which is perfect, ’cause I love that little posey as a binding.

Shannon, the editor of Stitch Craft Create Magazine, was kind enough to send along an extra Fall issue for me to give away to one of my readers!  If you haven’t checked out Stitch Craft Create Magazine yet, or if you have and you’re addicted to it (like me), just leave me a comment for a chance to win a copy of your own. =)

If you are a subscriber to Stitch Magazine, it is quite possible that you may have received your fall issue.  And, if so, it’s quite possible that you  may have seen a certain pillow, made by me, on the front cover.  Said front cover nearly caused me to fall out of my chair when it was brought to my attention by a wonderful bloggy friend.

My pillow arrived back home yesterday along with my copy of Stitch which I was so excited to see in person.  This is a fairly simple pillow–no tricky piecing, it’s all fusible applique and the quilting is done on the machine using Perle Cotton.

I love the colorful quilting and all those bright fall pops of color on the brown linen.

I haven’t seen this issue out in stores yet but it should be on it’s way before too long!

Happy Tuesday!

PTS7

I finished up my partner’s pillow for Pillow Talk Swap 7.  I sketched up the design loosely based on one of the pictures in my partners inspiration mosaic.

The little patchwork squares finish at 1″–some of my favorite kind of piecing.  I added in a lot of text fabrics and other fun fabrics–I’m really happy with how they all jive together. =)

I finished off the pillow with some straight line quilting(using Superior MasterPiece thread) and a fun text print binding.  All in all a very fun little project!

On my side of the family this year for Christmas we decided to be a bit thrifty in our gift giving  The over abundance of gifts isn’t what Christmas is about so we wanted to take the focus off of this aspect of Christmas.

We did a name exchange and one of the names we got was my sister Nicole’s name.  Nicole took two of my pillow classes earlier this fall and she had two partially finished pillow tops that were just waiting to be turned into pillows–they were sitting in my sewing room & who knows how long they would have remained there waiting on Nicole.

Nicole took my Half Square Triangle class.  If you remember she decided to change the colors to an aqua/grey theme & we raided my stash to choose fabrics.

Nicole's Fabrics

Nicole had her pillow top all pieced so all I had to do to finish it up was the quilting (I straight line quilted using 12 weight Aurifil thread), the back (envelope style), and binding.

Nicole also took my Christmas pillow class.

We decided to change this one up a bit also–she wanted a coordinating pillow to match the zig zag pillow.  So we used the same fabrics and instead of a reindeer applique, I suggested a birdie applique.  Nicole had this pillow top completed including the quilting (once again using 12 weight Aurifil thread) so I finished the back and added binding.

 I am really digging the Aurifil 12 wt. thread for straight line quilting–I lengthen the stitches a bit and I really like the more substantial thread against the fabrics–really gives a nice pop.

Happy Tuesday!

I’m excited to be a contributor in the latest issue of Fat Quarterly, issue # 7, which is all about Color!  I had such fun designing & making this pillow which is based off of an old traditional pattern–amazing how fresh fabrics & modern quilting can totally transform a traditional pattern!

Do you remember this rainbow stack of fabrics I showed you awhile back?

These are all of the fabrics I pulled to make my X Marks the Goose pillow.  And incidentally, I have a little baggie with the left over scraps from making my pillow–if you’re interested in some, leave me a comment and I’ll use good old RNG & send some rainbow scraps your way.

Issue #7 is on sale beginning today & includes the pattern for X Marks the Goose as well as many other fantastic patterns.  Fat Quarterly is an online magazine and can be purchased here. 

Mr. Reindeer has been finished–binding all sewn down.  Thanks for all of your machine binding tips!–One great thing about sewing binding on pillows is it sure goes a heck of a lot faster than it does for a quilt. =p

And now on to our thread winners: