Christmas Crafts Revealed Part III

Hey Everyone~

Round Three, ding, ding, ding!

Picking right back up from where I left off yesterday. I'm finally sharing the Hawiian Quilted Pillow from Martha Stewart that I gave you a peek at back in December. Greg & Apryl (my brother and sister-in-love) loved their pillow (and matching sheet set), which made me happy.

Whoo boy! This was a doosie. The echo quilting wasn't hard exactly, although it did require a certain bit of concentration to keep all that echoing even, but it was very time consuming. I estimate this took about 26 hours to complete, not including actually sewing the pillow front & back together or the Velcro debacle, that part was done by machine and went quick. I don't think I'm an especially fast or slow stitcher either, I just wanted all of the stitches to be uniform and tight.  Let's go look!

Here I go... this picture is at the very beginning... Well, not the beginning actually. At this point the appliqué was well, appliquéd, which took about 4-5 hours in itsself... at least. I know this because we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince one and a half times (Ana, my neice was staying the night that evening and she fell asleep the about 1/2 way through, so we had to watch the second half of the movie again the next morning) as well as all the special features before I was finished applying appliqué. By the way, have I ever told you of my love for Harry? I loves me some Harry Potter!!! But that is a whole different cauldron full of hot, strong love ... moving right along...

Done with the echoing! My poor fingers! I think each and every one of them was poked several times. Ouch.

It's hard to see in these photos, but the colors of the echoing threads change through out the pillow. They are what I called "soft" Rasta colors, instead of red, green and yellow, I used a mellow gold thread inside the appliqué, a sage green for the first three echoes, and a mauvy pink for the last five echoes. This was one of those "change gears in the middle of the project" things. I had planned to only use the yellow in the appliqué and the sage around it, but it felt too muted. I wanted to give the quilting a little more contrast, but not be too "loud" about it. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm SO happy I did, because the pink is really pretty and adds a tiny bit of femininity to the design.

This is the fabric I used for the back. Again, this wasn't the original plan. Originally, I had cut fabric for the back that was sort of an olive green micro suede (you can actually see a bit of it in the lower left corner of the picture above) but I changed my mind and couldn't use it, it was so DRAB! I hate drab. Yuck... rummage, rummage, rummage through my fabric basket...bingo! I really like this print; it was part of a fat quarter pack that I bought for another project, which wasn't used. Woo! It's perfect... (to me). Lush flowers and pretty butterflies are much more reminiscent of the Hawaii where G & A were married, than crummy old micro suede!

Here you can see what the two fabrics looked like against each other. Yes, much better than army olive green.

Sadly, this is the last picture I took of the pillow before it was sewn together, wrapped up and given away. Now I understand how that happens when I've read that on other blogs. You just get so busy, and into the groove of what you're doing, you forget to stop to take photographs. Bummer...

After I had sewn the front & back together, I tackled the bottom. I knew from the start that I needed to make this pillow cover removable so that it could be washed if needed. G & A have two little ones and I have no illusions that this pillow will remain pristine. I used Velcro for easy removal... twice! I hand sewed the Velcro the first time, but it looked funny, the pieces didn't lay together properly, so I cut it off and did it again by machine with a much better result, although I don't think it was a hand vs. machine issue, I think it had more to do with the way I finished the bottom...

One other thing that I ended up doing twice was the stitching at the very center of the appliqué, originally I just used the golden thread and went in a spiral until I got to the very center, but I didn't like it, so I cut those parts out as well and redid them with the pink thread that I used at the outter edges of the echoing, and in a star pattern. Much better.

Gosh I wish I had a picture of the completed project... darn it. Well you can imagine, right?

***crickets***

Right. So, this is my first completed foray into quilting of any kind! What do I think? Well, I think I liked it, and I think I'm going to take a quilting class soon One thing is for sure, I have A LOT to learn. :o) Yay learning!

I have one more thing to post tomorrow to wrap up my Christmas Crafts Revealed, can't wait! All you Twihards are going to dig this! Stay tuned!!

oxo~ Lisa