Pretty polaroid pillow present

Strictly speaking this is more of a cushion than a pillow, meant as decoration more than for sleeping on, but who can resist using a bit of alliteration... I am as ever late to the party - never got round to making polaroid blocks when everyone else seemed to be doing so, and a quilt using these tiny blocks seemed a bit overwhelming. A cushion though, that I could do. And as I needed a present for my sister's birthday I had just the right excuse.

There are some fun references to things we have talked about this summer among the fussy cut motifs - I can't count the number of shops I have visited with her to find the perfect parasol for her balcony. We never had any luck - they all seem to be dark blue or white this year - but at least she has this to remind her of our quest. The scooter is a reference to our niece who got her two-wheeled dream last spring and had us doting aunties all worried about how she'd fare in traffic. The moon refers to all our late-night phone calls, and so on. I had fun choosing fabrics that had some special meaning. I followed the instructions for cutting and piecing I found in one of the swap groups on Flickr, and didn't really stop to think. Had I done so, I might have stopped after the white borders of the blocks and used grey lattice strips between them, thus avoiding the seams down the middle in the gray areas. But with only six blocks to join, that doesn't really matter, it wasn't as if that extra work was too taxing...

I used a strip of one of the fabrics from the front to hide the zipper on the back, and added a little surprise underneath it.