February Blogger's Pillow Party

Stitched in Color is hosting the very awesome Blogger's Pillow Party.

Every month is a new contest, with super cool judges and fun prizes that you can win if your pillow is chosen! This month, the super-talented Rita from Red Pepper Quilts, one of my absolutely favorite blogs, is the judge.

I finally decided that I was going to go ahead and enter! You've all seen this pillow before, but I just love it so much I think it's worth entering in this contest.

So for the second time--my Christmas wreath pillow!

This pillow is based off of a Moda Bake Shop tutorial for a wall hanging that I modified to make into a pillow. I made this in December, and I really wanted to do some Christmas sewing, but I wanted something smaller than a quilt and more realistically finish-able for me (as I am so slow sometimes!). I was looking around for inspiration and happened upon the tutorial and immediately popped into my mind the idea of doing it pillow size in bright, modern fabrics. I scaled it down to result in a 20" pillow, and I absolutely love how it turned out! It is so bright and fun, just what I was looking for. I used some of my favorite fabrics--I have quite the stash of green fabrics as it's one of my favorite colors, and I was able to use quite a selection of those!--and it felt good to make something for me that was exactly what I wanted. It was also my first time installing a hidden zip, and I think I'm a convert now, I want to put them in everything I make! This is also some of the smallest piecing I've done--I think I started with 1.75" squares, resulting in 1.25" finished squares. It was quite a feat trying to get all those corners to match up! I also attempted free-motion quilting again, and am reasonably satisfied with how it turned out. :) I think every time I attempt it, I get a little bit better!   This is only the second pillow I've made, and I think this one has really convinced me to make more. They are relatively quick (faster than a quilt for me, for sure!) and you can try out new techniques or fabrics that you might not want to commit to in a whole quilt. I'm thinking of all the different blocks or ideas I want to try out, how fun would it be to have a series of pillows documenting my stitching adventures? :)

The pillow is now waiting very patiently in my sewing room for Christmas time to roll around again and I am dreaming of the Christmas quilts I can make to go with it. I am imagining maybe a full size quilt with small pieced squares in a similar minimalist, modern-type design, but perhaps making a Christmas tree? :) That might be fun!

Thanks for stopping by! Now I am off to check out all the other lovely pillows entered for this month..