Coral Pantone Quilt Challenge 2019

It has been ages since I did a Pantone Quilt Challenge, but I just love Coral color and couldn't help myself from making a little Pillow present for my daughter's birthday, her DREAM PILLOW.

This pillow measure's 18" squared

I used a lot of fun fabrics

Mermaids

Narwhals

And Unicorns

The DREAM and the solid on the Flange is from Tula Pink's solids the other pink solid used in the curved piecing is Kona's Flamingo :)

Lots of Art Gallery fabrics were used along with several prints from Amy Sinibaldi "Paperie" collection, some Sarah Jane "Magic" pieces and several prints from Cotton and Steel Rifle Paper Company "Les Fleurs" collection

The piecing was sewn with Aurifil 2021 and I used Aurifil Brillo 739 for the gold accent on the stitching around the word DREAM and also for sewing down the flange binding technique that I love to use!

These Tula Pink Applique Scissors are a DREAM to work with, so easy to cut out the fabric with them.

Did I tell you it was my first time doing curved piecing, phew, it is a whole lot harder than I thought it would be, I am not a "pinner" but look at all of the pins I needed to use.

I will definitely try this technique again, but next time I will give myself some extra room to trim the blocks down, there wasn't much wiggle room with the original pattern.  Which is from the Love Patchwork and Quilting Magazine, Issue Twelve, designer Julianna Gasiorowska of Sewing Under Rainbow blog. 

Linking my DREAM PILLOW to the 2019 Pantone Quilt Challenge over at Bryan House Quilts

18" squared

and I live in GREECE!

Tell Me a Story Pillow

I joined Amy of During Quiet Time for the Tell Me a Story Holiday Pillow a version of her Tell Me A Story Quilt in her Intentional Piecing book.
I love the idea of this quilt, but I'm really bad at being "scrappy" and although there are tips on how to make it not so scrappy I still decided to make the color around the fussy cut squares all one color, plus I was using scraps from another Christmas project, so it was a win win situation.  Now to find the cutest center Christmas fabrics and along came Lucy of Charm About You blog, she sent me a FQ of the cutest Christmas fabric and I was able to make 6 blocks with it.
The Stories:

 Mr. Snowman was the fist to arrive in Santa's village, actually he never left since the elves made him last year.

This guy was next, he wanted to be there in case any of Santa's Reindeer ended up getting sick, his little bunny friend helped put lights up in his antler's, just in case it was Rudolf who got sick.

Little Nik ran ahead of his family he was so excited to see Santa coming.

Along came the rest of the Penguin family, little Katerina was wearing her new red scarf to show Santa.

The little red fox was also hoping to show off his new scarf to Santa.

Mr. Polar Bear brought several gifts for Santa to drop off with some of his family that had moved to Canada.

All six of these are from the same print, adorable right.  I even had extra of the fabric and sent it to another friend who lives in the States, so this FQ went from the UK, to Greece, to USA!
In Thanks, Tammy , sent me some cute fabrics she had been cutting up for her blocks.

I wanted the Santa that she had, it was perfect!

For the next block, this little elf was in charge of letting everyone know that Santa was coming, she told the bird's to spread the word in song, "Here Comes Santa Claus"

All the elves started to sing along.

Even Santa was singing along.
It makes a perfect pillow, with slight changes to the original plan and what is written in the book. (guilty look here, I'm horrible at following directions and sometimes think I know what will look best)
Here is the finished Pillow.

 Quilted with Red Aurifil #2250 and Blue Aurifil #6738

Tammy sent me so many cute fussy cut squared that I just had to make a second pillow,

 This one is based off of a Christmas Song, "Santa Clause is Coming to Town"  especially the line, who is naughty and nice.  I think the little girl above is on the naughty list and the one below is obviously on the nice list.

Again scrappy greens from a previous Christmas project, sadly I needed to order more of the grey fabric and even though I ordered it from the UK it did not make it here in time.  So these will continue after Christmas.

September the cushion month

I made a few cushions this month for some challenges, I wanted to make more, but you know, time, it wait's for no one.
First cushion that I finished is a really easy and quick make, saw a gal do it on Instagram for the Modern Makers Cushion Palooza and was like oohh.. I want to make that with the new Raindrop fabric that I just got.

Buttons are cut from the Selvedge on the Raindrop fabric, so cute.

If you would like to make your own Sprocket Pillow, it is a free pattern available at Cluck Cluck Sew
It was really rainy, for weeks, so this pillow had some magically powers and made it sunny again.  My daughter has claimed it as her pillow.

Rain, Rain Go Away, Come Again Some other day! I'm not a fan of rain, can you tell :)

Next up was actually a UFO/WIP I didn't finish it originally because I wanted to make the back special as well as the front and was trying to come up with something.

I decided on this, what do you think? Makes me think of a Stained Glass Porthole.

The kids fought over who would get to claim this pillow,

Katerina technically won, she is very good at wrestling, but since she got the previous pillow this one went to Nik.

Nik was excited to have won and even agreed to take some photos (rare occurrence)

I then asked if he could take a few photos with me holding the pillow, this is how that went.

 Me Speaking.

1. Don't stand so close to mummy.
2. Try to get just the pillow
3. That's better, but try to get all of the pillow in the picture.
4. um yeah I guess your done taking photos then huh?

This pattern is a free video tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company, instead of the 5" pieces of fabric suggested in the tutorial I used 2.5", the pillow measures at 20" square, and I used a zipper at the bottom.

We took these pictures at an old abandoned stone house.

Next up is a labor of love, I had originally wanted to enter it into 3 different challenges, but was unable to finish it in time for the Selvage Challenge, that is okay because I originally got this idea from a gal on Instagram when she showed her #shapefamilychallenge pictures and I just loved how she made Hearts out of Paper pieces!

these hearts are made with
1 - 2" 6 Point Diamond and
2 x 1" Jewels

 When you put the hearts together they made a void in the shape of a star, SO I am calling this cushion Swirling Hearts and Stars.

I went outside again to take some new photos, does this one look better?

Originally I was only going to quilt the stars,

Only stars quilted

But it didn't pop as much as I thought it would, so then I quilted everything except the hearts, plus I really wanted to use my new Aurifil Brillo 739, it's so pretty and sews like butter!

Everything quilted but the hearts

I used some of my favorite prints with selvedges and some of my favorite designers got heart's around their names, don't worry I live to far away to become a stalker :)

I also mention my family, who lives in the USA

Okay I'll stop now, Picture overload! oh wait, let me show the back, had this picked out in the beginning for the selvedge challenge,

Insta Love fabric on front and selvedge on back

Envelope back, cushion is not stuffed yet, need to make a special shape for it and I'm out of fill.

Linking all 3 Pillows to Modern Makers Cushion Palooza
And the English Paper  Piecing Pillow that I showed last was made using the Hexie Shape Family from Tales of Cloth for their #shapefamilychallenge
Thanks for stopping by!

Celestial Star QAL

Diane of "From Blank Pages" is hosting a QAL with the foundation paper piecing quilt "Celestial Star".  I am a sucker for stars, but not a big fan of foundation paper piecing, lol.  So I am hoping to learn some tricks and tips about that type of sewing.  Already she is a fountain of information, her post about Color Theory and Fabric choosing is mind blowing, well at least my mind was blown a little too much, I think I read over the post about 3 times, so much to learn!
First I picked a block I liked from her examples of black and white with value added.  This is my favorite, there are so many different variations of what you can do with one block pattern, it is so cool!

My fabrics have already been chosen, :), I want to continue my "Textures fabric, by Angela Walters" star pillow theme.

I made the picture in black and white just to make sure there is that value scale.

Here's my drawing, I do better if I have the colors written down, and will do the same to my paper pieces otherwise I will have wrong colors all over the place.

I will be making the 18" block to make a pillow.

The interior will switch between the stripes and the dots and the exterior ring will have the swirls.

Star Light Star Bright Pillow

I love it!

I machine quilted and washed it yesterday and then did some big hand stitches on it today and put the back and zipper on.  This is my first time doing a side zipper (or bottom, guess how you put the cushion on your couch) I followed this tutorial here on Pretty Bobbins. (all links will take you to a new page)  Worked out pretty good.

I like my zippit zippers, I cut a little notch off the ends and glue them on the card she includes with the order, that way it is almost like a thread card but instead it is my zipper card.

I matched the Aquamarine 049 perfectly with my Teal Coblestones Textures fabric from Angela Walters.  I quilted a cathedral window echo thing, in the Swirls Jade (Variegated Aurifil 4662) and Swirls Citrus (Variegated Aurifil 4658).
And hand quilted in the AG Pure Elements Mystic Grey areas.

I think my Star Light, Star Bright pillow looks pretty darn cool next to my Star Surround pillow.

Close up of threads used and hand stitching.

Both of these patterns are FREE and available from Melissa at Happy Quilting, check her Quilt-A-Long's page.
More pictures of the sewing process can be found here.
Linking to Pillow Collective over at Amy's Creative Side.
Linking to