More Pillows

I got a little sidetracked working on my UFO's by making some pillows for myself :-).  My sister loved the pillows I made for my grand kids and wanted to make one herself...so of course I had to join her and make a matching one :-). I found a half yard of awesome fox fabric with bright colours and we cut it carefully, so we could use it for the backs of the fox pillows.  My sister drew up patterns for glasses matching our own glasses :-).   I then decided to try the hedgehog and two foxes.  There are instructions on Elizabeth Hartman's website to make these rectangular pillows using IKEA pillow inserts. (You will still need the patterns for the fox, hedgehog and cats to make the blocks.)  This worked very well on my IKEA chair upstairs, so I also made two kitties into a pillow for our second chair in the living room.  Now I can read comfortably in those chairs :-).

Fox fabric for the back of the pillows

The first IKEA pillow and my fox (bottom right) and my sister Thea's fox (bottom left)

The pillow fits perfectly on the arms of the IKEA chair.

The cat pillow (Simon and Daisy)

The fox pillow

Thea's fox pillow quilted and ready to make into a pillow when she got home.

 At least these pillows did not end up on the UFO pile...they are finished!

Valentine Runner

My sister from BC was here for three weeks in January and we had a good time hanging out in my sewing room.  One of the things she helped me tackle was a master UFO list!!  Wow, that is a scary exercise LOL.  I am in the process of sorting through my fabric shelves and organizing and rearranging those and finding a few more projects.  Once I get through that, I will add up the total.  I may or may not report back on this blog :-).  

One of the items we found was a stack of red and white polka dot and Valentine themed half square triangles.  I had put them together to teach a class on doing HST's and showing how many designs you can come up with using HST's.  While showing my sister many of the options, we settled on this design and she "made me" sew them together before I could go to bed.  A little pressure helps eh?  I then quilted it while she visited my other sister for a few days and actually got it finished an on the table before she left.  And, we checked it off the master list!  One down.....xxxxx to go!

We managed to find enough triangle squares to match up a section

Here is it on my kitchen table.

A closeup of the quilting.  It's a little hard to see (click on the photo to enlarge it), but I quilted lines very close together in the center and in the triangles outlined by the red thread.  I added a wider red flat piping strip to give it a little colour as it was quite dark.