Donation Day

I just shared half a dozen quilt tops (maybe eight? I already forget), along with a huge box overflowing with yardage, with Quilts2Heal. Here's hoping they end up finished nicely and in the homes of people who need them.

Pillow extravaganza

I have been scavenging through my bins and shelves of half-finished projects and interesting bits, making pillows, ornaments, tableware, and little bits of loveliness. Recently I found a small embroidered Pi that was cut off-center in a hexagon, but with enough margin to become a circle.

I put some Dresden wedges together and appliqued the pi into the center, but at that point I couldn't decide if I wanted to make a pillow or a table mat (pumpkin pie season is nigh, after all!). The Facebook consensus was pillow, and my friend Liz suggested a braid-edged box-edged cushion...challenge accepted.

Simple radiating quilting inside the wedge seams.

I had the perfect coordinating shade of maroon cord for the corners so after I did a little quilting on the top I basted the cord along the edges of the circle.

Cord basted along the edges 

I fused some DecoBond to a nice coordinating stripe for the back and basted more cording along those edges. I was operating without a specific pattern or tutorial, so I'm not sure if this is the most elegant way to make a side panel, but I started by edging a 20" zipper with some of the same fabric that the wedges were cut from. I then added length with the rest of that same stripe. (Geometry review: Circumference = Pi x Diameter.)

Zipper for the side panel

Many pins were pressed into service when it was time to stitch the side panel to the top. Many, many pins.

Pinning the side panel on

There must surely be a more elegant way to stitch such a seam, but my wrangling did the trick in the end, and I was very encouraged by how the first seam looked.

Side attached to the top panel -- halfway there....

Stitching the bottom on was a little anticlimactic (if you try this at home, don't forget to unzip the zipper before finishing the second seam) and the finished cushion came out terrific!

Finished cushion, fig in the background

Back of cushion

Zipper for cover removal

Pi cushion

Pi cushion, approx. 17.5" x 3"

Dimensional Pyramid

My art group decided to make something dimensional for the September meeting. I have literally hundreds of ideas of things that I want to assemble...for now, I made a simple project to try out some different construction techniques. (I learned, for example, that ladder stitch is far superior to whip stitch if you don't want to see thread in the finished seam.) I have some small triangles cut from DecoFuse to try some smaller polyhedra in the future, but sometimes quite a bit of time passes between idea and execution.

This pyramid is made from four 9" pieces of very stiff double-fuse interfacing (Fast2Fuse? I don't have a label anymore). I adhered the pieced triangles to the separate triangles, wrapped the edges around, completed the decorative quilting and embellishing, then hand-sewed the pieces together. Each face is quilted or embellished differently, and each point of the pyramid has matching fabrics on all three faces.

Paper-pieced hexagons appliqued onto Side One

Free-motion flower on Side Two

Spiral in metallic thread on Side Three

Isometric grid of beads on Side Four

View from above

Neon Brights

Neon! What else is there to say? Just looking at it makes me want to find some jelly shoes (ouch) and big dangly earrings. I love this quilt so much, and I am so pleased that it will soon be on its way to brighten the nursery of a fresh new baby girl!

Details

• Pattern: Oklahoma, by Villa Rosa Designs
• Finished size: 45 x 57"
• Quilting: freehand free-motion posies in Superior Threads Rainbows, variegated Neons colorway, used on top and in the bobbin
• Eye-popping Factor: 11

Neon delight!

Stitching detail of neon quilt

Back of the neon quilt. I couldn't believe I found a fabric with neon polka dots on soft brown