Christmas Pillow Tutorial

Are you thinking about Christmas yet?  Yep me neither haha!  I had a friend tell me yesterday that she has already finished one quilt that is meant to be a Christmas gift this year.  Now that’s impressive!

Over on the Fort Worth Fabric Studio blog they are celebrating Christmas in July.  They’ll have a month's worth of fun, creative ideas!  This last week I shared a tutorial to make this quilted Christmas pillow. 



It just needs two of your favorite prints and a bit of background/solid white.  The prints I chose for my pillow are Teal Snowflake (Postcards for Santa), and  Essentials Criss-Cross Holiday Red.  You can see more of the Christmas prints in stock at FWFS here.   There are some really great holiday fabrics out this year! 

Are you not a big fan of throw pillows?  On the tutorial I also show you how to make this into a table topper.  Something for everyone ;)     



Thanks for stopping by! 

Ruffled Pillow

At the end of each day, I walk around the house gathering up all of the pillows and arranging them back on the couch.  In our house we have many, many throw pillows – all handmade – some that were given to us and some that I’ve made myself. 

Those pillows never stay on the couches though.  They somehow migrate into the boys’ bedrooms where they are well-loved and used.  A few end up in the basement where they were used as shields, land mines, or bases.

I’m hoping that with all of the ruffles and the wood buttons this pillow will be less desirable to the kids and will maybe stay put.  What are my odds, do you think?

This adorable ruffled pillow was one of my quick projects from last week.  The pillow pattern comes from an Adornit book called “Long Live Vintage”. 

It was fun to make ruffles again.  I think it has to be at least four years or so since I’ve ruffled anything!  It just doesn’t happen that often in a house with so many boys. 

The backing is a simple envelope closure which is my favorite way to do pillow backs. 

For now the pillow is part of a display at a local fabric shop but I’m looking forward to adding her to our Christmas décor this year. 

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One More Crib Set

Back in April I wrote a brief post about how I had received a custom order for a set of crib bumpers and a pillow to match this quilt:

These were sent long ago to their new home, but I never posted photos of the finished project!

The customer wanted solid white bumpers with yellow ties and the same blue checkered binding that was used on the quilt.

For the pillow I repeated the same half square triangle pattern from the quilt and added a thin border around the HSTs. 



I quilted the front of the pillow, but not the back panel.  There is a flap with a 2-button closure so the pillow can be washed if needed.



I have to say that I really enjoyed working on a couple of smaller projects for a change!  All of the pillows I’ve made for myself have been on the simpler side.  I think I need to do a few more like this one!

Little Butterflies

A couple of months ago I received a custom order request that I was delighted to fill.  The customer wanted a pillow sham and a set of crib bumpers to match this quilt:



Because the quilt had been made about 6 months before, I had some hunting to do in order to find more of the same fabrics.  Thank goodness for etsy and other online fabric shops!  I found some of the fabric here and some of it here. 

The customer also wanted me to incorporate some of the butterflies from the orange print.  I did some raw-edge applique butterflies on the sham:





with just a bit of embroidery for the body and antenna of each butterfly.  I first showed you my “test” butterfly here.

I used just enough straight-line quilting on the sham to give it the quilted look without it being distracting. 



The straight-line stitching also ties in with the crib bumpers:



One side of the bumpers is solid gray with a few butterflies here and there.

 

The other side is made of strips of varying widths using all of the fun prints from the quilt.  The binding has to be my favorite:

I’ve always loved this stripe.  It’s from the Happier line by Deena Rutter (Riley Blake). 

The little one who gets to enjoy all of these butterflies is due to arrive in just a few weeks.  I’m impressed that mama has the nursery all set up and ready!  I think that with both my boys I was sewing bumpers, sheets, curtains, etc well after they were born.  Good thing babies sleep a lot for the first few months!

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