Camera cushion

It occurred to me that I never showed my camera cushion that I finished last spring on the blog. So here it is.

I must admit that I was inspired by Emily Peacock's Rodeo design which I stitched a few years back:

I bought it as a kit and loved working on it. When I came across that camera quote on Pinterest I had the bright (?) idea of challenging myself to create something similar. Designing is not easy, and in hindsight I see many things I would have done differently, especially when I compare the two designs.

Now I didn't want to be too much of a copycat, so I didn't look at the Rodeo design at all while I was working on my own, but I expect you see where the inspiration came from, and if the designer should come across it online, I hope she is flattered because I tried, rather than offended by my using elements from her design to create my own. I'll never try to sell it or anything - it sits well in my sofa in respectful distance from the cushion that inspired it. End of story. 

Advent calendar

In 2016 I decided to indulge my inner child and treat myself to an advent calendar. But not just any calendar, I went for a quilter's calendar with lots of surprises in it.
I received 24 numbered golden paper bags with fabric, thread, batting and instructions . all I needed to finish four different projects. Those who have followed me on Instagram know all about the excitement every day of discovering what that day's surprise was.

The first week I got a set of fabrics, template, zipper and batting to make a pillow:

Next out was all I needed to make a shopping bag that can be folded and tucked behind the pocket, making it a useful bag to keep in your purse until it is needed:

The third project was a set of christmassy pot holders complete with heat resistant batting:

The final project was a narrow table runner for New Year's Eve - perfect because that gave me a week to finish the last project:

All in all this was a great calendar, reviving those childish expectations running up to Christmas, and just enough work to do each day to be able to keep up with it all (although I must confess I did most of the sewing during the weekends...) - I had such fun with this that I'm really glad I went for it, and the best thing of all is that it seems to have given me back my sewing mojo, so much that I actually started the new year with cutting fabric for a new quilt!

Tiffany cushions

Years and years ago - yes, that's a quite specific time frame, isn't it? - I bought three cushion kits in London. I don't remember where. I stitched the first one (the Iris) right away and promptly forgot all about it.
Several years and moves later I found them in a basket while looking for something easy to work on while waiting for my mum having minor surgery. I wanted something that I didn't have to concentrate on too much, and this was ideal, since the outlines were printed on the fabric and all I had to do was to stitch those in black chainstitch and fill in with colours later.

The surgery went well, and my hours in the waiting room didn't feel too long, since I had something useful to do. I was amazed by how fast the work progressed, and kept at it after coming home.  A few weeks later the tulip was all done and I went straight on to the sunflower.
The finished panels were about 12" - slightly too small for sofa cushions (I couldn't find any inserts that small, anyway) so I added strips of blue home dec fabric around the edges and used the same fabric for the back.
Once they were finished I gave them to my mum for her birthday, and I'm glad I did, because she was overjoyed.

More stitches

Last autumn I happened to come across an episode of Pippi Longstocking, the one with the first snow, and fell in love with Annika's pink ski sweater.

I searched everywhere for a pattern, and might have found one that was close enough, but got distracted along the way. Before I knew it I had a folder full of pictures of ski jumpers from the 50s and 60s.

Now I know that there is no way I'm going to knit all those sweaters, but I didn't want to forget all the lovely patterns, so I charted some of them and ended up with a shortlist of twelve and decided that knitting samples was out - I'd have to buy lots of yarn and I'd end up with samples that couldn't be used for anything.
I do have lots of tapestry wool, though, and found a piece of canvas that could become a small cushion. So I ended up embroidering the patterns instead, leaving a few stitches between each block of pattern.

Now I could have embroidered sashing and a border, but by the time I got to that stage I just wanted to be done with the whole thing, so I blocked it and added some polka dot ribbon as sashing and some fabric borders to make the cushion bigger. I used the same fabric as backing for the cushion, added a zipper, and there you are: my tapestry knitting sampler. The size of the canvas I had dictated that the pattern blocks would have to be small, so you can't see the whole pattern on most of them, but they will serve as a reminder of the patterns I have stored, should the urge to knit another ski sweater ever arise...

I used a stitch that looks like knitting, by the way, so you get an idea what the patterns would look like if I ever were to knit them up.

And a bit of stitching

I stitched this sampler a while back from a pattern in Stitchery Magazine. By the time I'd found a frame the right size, I'd mislaid it, but as these things work out, I found it again while I was looking for something else. Of course I'd put a finished cross-stitch sampler in my box of ribbons! I have no idea how it ended up there, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time... Anyway, once I'd found it, and while I still knew where the frame was, I got the job done and here's the result. I don't know if you can see it clearly, but the poem is by Emily Dickinson.

On a trip to Denmark a few years back I came across this pillow in a shop window and just had to get the kit. I have been stitching a little every now and again since I finished the Emily Peacock pillow, and eventually I crossed the finish line on this one as well. The pattern is from Fru Zippe.

I couldn't resist going for the matchy matchy look on the back and included a zip and flap to match the contrast colours on the front. I might be the only person who notices, but somehow these things give me immense pleasure. I'm funny like that.

Looking back

 -or what I did last Christmas...
I thought I'd do a bit of summing up from these months of no blogging. My Christmas sewing was all about panels, it seems. I unearthed this old Santa panel from the depths of my stash and finally got around to doing something about it. I cut it apart and ended up with three items: a quilted cushion:

 A small wallhanging:

 And a larger wallhanging with a bit of a complcated log cabin/star thing going on. I didn't plan this one very well, so I had to wing it and ended up cutting the tips of the star off.

 -But you can always cheat a bit, right? A few strands of embroidery floss later and you wouldn't know if you were galloping past on a big horse...

 The best thing about this was that I got to use that panel that I had been procrastinating about making into something for ever. Yet another example of how you should just get in there and do something - it doesn't take as long as you think!

Proof in point: these fun panels from Laurie Wisbrun got made into cushions as soon as they arrived and it took no more than a Saturday afternoon.

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.

Reunion Jack

My paper piecing project is finished. It didn't take as much time as I feared to remove all that paper, just a couple of TV-programmes...
I have seen several simplified versions of British flag cushions online, but I'm such a nitpicker that I had to try to make flags with the correct dimensions, which I found here. I drafted my flag in EQ and printed out the pattern for paper piecing . Some of the strips are so narrow, that I couldn't have made the blocks any other way. I used fabric from the Reunion line by Sweetwater, and a linen/cotton-mix for the frame on the front.

There are more Reunion fabrics on the back, and the zipper is hidden under the green stripe, using this brilliant method. So there you have it: Union Flag (or Union Jack as it is often called) + Reunion fabric = Reunion Jack.

WIP Friday

These last couple of days have seen me running straight to the sewing machine when I come home from work. I have had an idea I wanted to try out, and the only way I could get the precision I wanted was to go for paper-stitching. However, once I started I remembered why I hadn't used this technique for so long - aaargh, this was too much! Placing the fabric in the right place so that it covered the area it was supposed to when it was flipped over... Let's just say that the seam ripper got a good workout!

But finally, these last couple of days the gears clicked into the right slots in my head and the fun began. I find myself staring into space and thinking about stitching and flipping during meetings at work, and about which colours to use next, as I'm walking home. So I really have no choice - it's straight to the sewing machine, and dinner just has to wait, and once it's in the oven I can stitch some more until the timer goes off...  All that extra sewing time has paid off though, so I'm almost done now. Just don't mention all that paper I'll have to remove in a while...

Quiet time

 I haven't really got round to quilting again since the holidays. It is just too cold and dark in my sewing corner. I might call it something grand like "my studio" or my "sewing room", but it is really just a corner of my bedroom, and by the time I get home from work it is dark and cold and all I want to do is to snuggle up under a quilt in my living room and watch TV. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, though - a bit of winter hibernation might be just the thing I need now. And there's always handstitching. I'm working on this pillow right now, and I can't believe how far I've got since I picked it up again on Christmas Day.

I've finished with all the counting bits, so it is just a bit of mindless filling in of the background and then the border - I can't wait to see how it all comes together once the empty space is filled with that soft, buttery yellow. I'll just keep at it until the temperature rises and my quilting mojo returns. I will just take the pillow text to heart: "Life is full of ups and downs, sometimes it feels like a rodeo, the secret is to enjoy the ride"!

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Edited to add: The design is by the faboulous Emily Peacock - go have a look at her Hug and Kiss pillows as well!

Henna Garden and retro pillows

I have finally pulled myself together and started making stuff again. The work week is still very busy, but I set last weekend aside for sewing, and my, was that great! I let cleaning and baking plans remain just that, plans, and turned the heater on in my bedroom/sewing room and devoted myself to cutting and stitching fabric while the storm raged outside.

I have more to show for my efforts, but I begin with these two pillows. The first one is made from my lovely stash of Sandi Henderson fabric - twelve different colourways of Henna Garden. I just love this fabric, and combining them all in one pillow means that I have a sample of each colourway even if I use the rest for gifts and all. My original plan was to fussy cut the fabric so that the pattern continued from one patch to another,  and I carefully worked out the size of the patches accordingly. After making several mistakes, involving not taking into account the seam allowances (duh!) and turning fabric the wrong way, I confess that my patience got the better of me, and I ended up just cutting patches and stitching them together without taking the pattern into account. Had I stopped to think, I might have adjusted the size of the patches to make the centre square, but never mind, I like the pillow just the way it is!

The back is made from strips of Henna, and the light strip of cotton/linen fabric hides a zipper. I love this way of adding hidden zippers, making the back as interesting as the front, and it is so easy to do, see the tutorial here. 

The other pillow was much more straightforward, using the Viewmaster fabric from Ruby Star Rising for the front, and retro radios and fashion ladies for the back.

The Viewmaster strip hides the zipper on this one, maknig it blend in with the rest of the pattern.

The Henna Garden Pillow is quilted with a thin layer of batting and an old, plain fabric remnant for backing - it gets hidden inside the pillow anyway, so it doesn't matter. The retro pillow is made from sturdier fabric and didn't need any extra support.
I used down pillow inserts for both these pillows and I just love the soft squishy feel of them!

More pillow talk

 My old sofa pillows were looking a bit tired, so it was time for a change. I had a piece of gorgeous turquoise brocade which looked quite good next to a turquoise linen. I really like the different textures here. I also had some felt in the same colour, but decided that it was too much, so I kept it simple and used only these two. I used my largest yoyo-maker to make a brocade yoyo and found a gold button in my stash for the perfect finish.

For the back I used this great method again - it just comes together so easily that it has soon become my perfect go-to method of adding a zipper to the back of a pillow.

 The other pillow is quite different. It uses the same linen as the other one for the background, but here I added double sided strips of fabric stitched on to the backing along the middle of each strip. After finishing the pillow I tacked the strips together here and there with contrasting stitches of cotton floss. I used fabric from a pillow I made earlier and some of my precious Authentic strips, so that everything will tie in together eventually.

I used a newsprint fabric for the back of this one - nice to have something to read before taking a nap ;-)