Quilted Pillows

If you've been reading here for a while you'll know that I'm lucky to have some very dear crafting friends that live locally.  We met through a knitting meetup group, and hang out at least once a month.  These gals are great and always look out for each other (including throwing the most amazing baby shower for a yet-to-be-born Naomi, and I). 

One of our dear friends, Genia, just purchased her first home and is busily trying to decorate, furnish and make it all her own.  So the group got together to throw a little housewarming party for her.  You should have seen the cool stuff that she got, and needless to say a lot of the attention was on helping outfit her new crafting space :)  Very cool!

In addition to hosting the party, Stacey came up with a great idea to make Genia some throw pillows.  Genia looooves skully fabric, and Stacey had a suggested pattern and some fun skully fabric for us to use:  skulls with knitting needles, and skulls with scissors.  We divided the fabric between 3 of us - Stacey, Terrie and I - and set off to each make a throw cushion.

The fun part of this is that we each chose a different design from 'Oh Fransson's Chopped Vegetables' pattern, and also used fabrics from our own stash that complemented the skully fabric.  The end result is what I like to think of as siblings - each one totally unique, and yet quite obviously from the same family.

Here are the skully siblings:



L to R: Stacey, Terrie and Sam versions.

Here's a close up of the one that I made.  Front:



Back:

 

Genia was really touched with all the gifts :)

In the spirit of 'same but different', I also worked on a couple of blocks for the Denver Quilt Bee project.  The quilt bee works like this: Each participant selects an inspiration quilt/design, provides fabrics for that quilt and packages it all in a box.  Each month the box goes to a different particpant, and they make a couple of blocks using the suggested fabric and inspiration guidelines.  This launched last month, and my first box was for my good friend Terrie :)  It was fun to work on blocks for someone I knew well.

Here are Terrie's fabrics:



Terrie's inspiration quilt is the Bella's Bird pattern from Lotta Jansdotter.  Here are the squares that I made for her:



Many of the participants are recommending that you add a little fabric from your stash, to personalize at least one of the blocks.  I added some of my own grey scallop fabric to the 3rd square at the bottom of the picture - it felt like it was in the same family of grey, but will make that square a little different.  I'm looking forward to seeing how these all turn out.  This last week at the Denver Quilt Guild we each did a 'show and tell' for all of the blocks and it was great to see how each person is working with the themes and fabrics provided to them.  I was hesitant about joining since I have soo many things on the go right now, but was soo thankful that I did.  This is a lot of fun.

Well, it's snowing here and so I'm hoping to spend the majority of the day hibernating and working on my Mum's quilt.  But first I need to venture out and take Naomi to 'Nastics' (Naomi's word for gymnastics!)  She started last week and was beaming with happiness; she thoroughly enjoyed the class!  Aside from having a very happy girl, I also get rewarded with a very tired girl.  A very tired girl = longer nap time = more productive craft time!  Is that bad?  :)))

OK friends, have a lovely weekend,
Sam
xxx