testing

Our living room has been in desperate need of new throw pillows for a while.  Nothing is wrong with the old ones, but SOMEONE keeps hogging them. So for the past little while I have been slowly adding to a Pinterest board of pillow ideas (if anyone wants to be invited to the board, just leave your email in the comments and I will invite you, I would love to see your inspiration!). I had picked up some of these 18" pillow forms a while back - they have more of a feathery "throw pillow" feel than the ones we have used in the past.   My plan was to cut a bunch of 2 1/2" squares and then randomly arrange them for each pillow, but each one kind of took on a life of its own. The first one did end up random.  The fabrics were a variety of pinks, oranges, yellows, browns, and teals.  The backing of this pillow is a beloved Lotta Jansdotter print - I seriously love this fabric.  And I used Svetlana's pillow closure tutorial like I did on the last pillow

Yay!  I have finally finished up my Fussy Cut Sampler Quilt . If you were reading my blog over the summer, you saw lots of posts as I made the blocks in the book.  I LOVED working on this quilt top and I think I prolonged the process of finishing it up because I didn't really want it to end. It is a fantastic project.  One of the best things about the book is there is a mix of easy and slightly-challenging blocks, but nothing is too difficult and none of the blocks have too many pieces.  After I tried (and failed!) to complete a Farmer's Wife Quilt (I am not that patient!) this was key for me. Another fun aspect was that the authors, Elisabeth and Nichole, hosted a sew-along on Instagram.  It was so much fun to see so many different versions of each block. The QAL is now over, but you can still see the blocks with the hashtag #fussycutsamplerqal . I also really enjoyed an excuse to dig deep into my stash to try to find prints to fussy cut.  My sewing room was a D

I am excited to release a new pattern today - it is called The Flora Quilt and the pattern has instructions to make a baby (40" x 50") or lap size (60" x 70") version.  It is now available on Craftsy and Etsy ! The pattern is based on this quilt I made a couple months ago using Alison Glass' Handcrafted fabrics.   One of my goals in writing this pattern was to make it easy to choose the number of fabrics that you want to use.  That way you can use a single background fabric (see Sam's quilt below!) or you can make your quilt totally scrappy.  The piecing in the quilt is beginner-friendly, but I would recommend this for pattern for anyone who has had a little practice reading quilt patterns. I had 5 wonderful pattern testers for Flora and I am excited to get to share their quilts with you today. I included a short quote from the emails that each pattern tester sent me.  They were all tremendously helpful and I love how each of their quilts turned out.