Finished Pillow Talk Swap Pillow Revealed

So I was planning on waiting until my partner received this pillow before posting the full image shots, but since a blizzard is on its way (who knows if I'll lose power) and the pillow is due to arrive on my partner's doorstep tomorrow, I figured I'd go ahead. Besides, I've never been that good at waiting patiently anyway.



The pillow came out pretty much exactly as I had sketched it. Although, I made a mistake that I didn't catch until the pillow was completely finished. Can you see it? (The butterfly block on the right side of the second row was supposed to be in the middle position on the bottom row where the elephant block is and vice versa. But since the people I asked couldn't pin point the mistake, I decided to just leave it as is.)

For the back, I stitched a baby elephant holding its mama's tail onto some linen/cotton blend fabric, which I also used as the sashing on the front. I initially planned on using a yellow kei honeycomb dot for the other half of the back, but then decided those yellow elephants needed to be there instead.



My sister drew this cute little elephant for me and then I printed it out, traced it onto my fabric and tried stichery/embroidery for the first time. A girl in my quilt guild pointed me to the Stitch School blog, which has really great instructions for different types of stitches. I'm not into some of the traditional embroidery styles, but it will be fun to try other stitches on other projects.



So there you have it. It was so much fun participating in this swap. I hope my partner loves the pillow as much as I do...I almost didn't want to part with it.

My Favorite Little Quilt Swap

There's this swap on Flickr that I signed up for that's a bit different from traditional swaps. It's called My Favorite Little Quilt Swap. How it works is everyone who wants to participate makes a mini quilt and then emails photos of the quilt to the administrator. After all the quilts have been posted (deadline is December 3), we vote for our top 10 favorite quilts. The more votes your quilt gets, the more likely you are to get a quilt higher on your list of top ten. Make sense? Anyway, I wanted to participate in another swap and thought this would be a fun one to use some scraps. Not only did I want to use scraps, but I wanted to do minimal cutting. Here's what I came up with:


When I made my Life Is What You Make It quilt back in the spring, I had lots of little squares and strips left over. I used them to make 16 mini log cabins for the center. I added a border in Moda Bella Snow and then another larger patchwork border in some charms cut in half lengthwise. Easy peasy.


With my huge to-do list, I opted not to add a binding. I was tempted to stitch something on the back, but had to nix that idea since I didn't have much time to devote to this mini quilt. I did, however, add a couple tabs for hanging the quilt if the recipient is into that sort of thing.


For the quilting, I stitched diagonal lines through the corners of the log cabins. Then I did a decorative stitch in the white border and a different decorative topstitch around the edges.

Quilt stats:
Fabric: Make Life by Sweetwater; Moda Bella Solids in Snow; goldenrod fabric from Joann's
Size: approximately 16.5 inches square
Quilting: straight-line grid; decorative stitches
Top pieced: November 6, 2010
Backed, basted, and quilted: November 16, 2010

Log Cabins for Pillow Talk Swap

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions on the fabric choices I had selected for the Pillow Talk Swap. The previous photo didn't show the fabrics accurately, so they appeared more neutral than anything else. I did add a couple blue fabrics for that pop of color, though.



I'm pretty sure I've decided on a design so I made three log cabin blocks today. They measure about four and a half inches. I love these bikes.



I hope it all comes together the way I imagine it. I have something fun planned for the back, but I've never done anything like it before, so I hope it turns out. Most importantly, I hope my partner likes it. I've decided that it's hard to get a feel for someone's tastes just by looking at pictures they favorite on Flickr. Ah well, I'm sure everything will turn out fine. I'm sure I'm just stressing about it for no reason.