Piano and Electric Guitar Quilted Pillows

First off I would love to say Congrats to my cousin C and his new wife who were married shortly after the New Year. I was unable to attend the celebration but wanted to make something special for them.

C plays electric guitar and his wife plays piano. I found paper pieced patterns for both instruments from Soma Archaya at www.whimsandfancies.com . They were perfect and I was eager to have another paper pieced challenge.   

The blocks came together fairly quickly before Christmas and then I stalled out when it came time to quilt them and assemble into pillows. 

The guitar frets were satin stitched with an ivory coloured Isacord thread and the strings stitched with black and silver metallic Sulky thread. 

Around each instrument I echo quilted at about 1/4 inch spacing with the ivory Isacord. In the border, simple straight outlines with black Presencia thread.

The pillows backs are simple envelope style which were quilted with groups of 5 wavy lines to represent a musical score. 

I had planned to make the pillows the same size but I didn't want to change the size of the blocks out of fear of scaling all the tiny little pieces and not having them go together properly. The guitars dimensions didn't work great to border on a square pillow which is why I set it on point. 

It felt great to put the final stitches in the binding last night and they will be mailed to the newlyweds tomorrow.  

GeoMama

WIP Wednesday: Handsewn Holiday and Wedding Prep

Since my last post sewing has been happening (just very slowly) as December was busy until Christmas and then we went away on holidays. Since getting back I have been trying to get projects finished but I am also less than 60 days away from being a married lady (ack.. so much left to do!) so there has been more wedding prep than sewing.


First off, before Christmas I managed to piece and put borders on 2 paper pieced blocks designed by Some Archaya from http://www.whimsandfancies.com/. Both the piano and the electric guitar came together very nicely despite being a crazy amount of pieces. The plan was to have these quilted into pillows in time for a wedding gift but I was too exhausted to finish before the event. They will receive them before they have been married a month though, so that should be just fine.

I found that not wanting to baste in my unfinished basement was a big hurdle, but I finally bit the dust and did it last weekend. Since then I have been quilting pillow tops and backs. Echo quilting around the guitar and piano and then just simple lines in the borders.

Also just before Christmas I did a small commission project. A simple diaper cover, suspenders and bowtie for a friend's son's first birthday. She wanted to do a cake smash photo shoot and have him all dressed up. It was pretty quick once I got going and she loved it. 

Just after Christmas we went away to the mountains and I had a lovely time hand sewing all week. I sewed whole new block for Project Seventy-Two as well as 2 setting triangles. I was a little short on fabric but managed to finish a day after getting back. I also ran out of half-hexie papers for English Paper Piecing and had to scavenge out of the middle of the block to finish the edges and setting triangles.

This block brings the total to 4 blocks and I am finally starting to think about the bigger picture and what I want this quilt to look like. But I am not ready to share what that is just yet. All I can tell you is that I need ALOT more half hexagon papers and way more time. 

Finally, I have been slowly sewing away on my wedding flowers. I have about 30 completely done, and another 35-40 sewn that don't have centers yet. I have no idea how many I actually need for each bouquet, but for sure I need 5 bouquets and some extras for boutonnieres and corsages. 

Once pillows are done for my cousin it will be time to make a flower girl dress for Monkey and a ring bearer pillow for LB to carry. I am very excited to start on both projects and hope to have them both done by mid-February so I can relax for the month before the wedding.

Linking up with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social, Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Sarah at Sarah Did It! for Help for Hexie-aholics on the 17th.

Thanks for having a look and Happy New Year!

GeoMama

Snapshot of skiers - Quilted Pillows Finish

A whirlwind project. Started and finished in 3 weeks. Finished just in time for my cousins wedding.

It started with a very large number of very tiny pieces.

Slowly they came together.

When my eyes got tired from staring at the tiny pieces I made some patchwork envelope style pillow backs.

I did some stitch ripping after assembling some pieces in the wrong order.

But eventually I had a skier pieced and ready for a border. But due to some miscalculation and lack of planning, I did not have enough purple to do square borders

So I extended the mountain range.

Backs were quilted with simple straight lines and the lines of mountains were echoed on the front. 

Ski poles were added using the variegated purple thread that most of the quilting was done in. 

Envelope backs were stitched to the quilted fronts, and then a pretty binding was added by machine.

And then 2 pillow form were stuffed inside!

One for my cousin.

And one for her new husband.

Now for a few details,

Quilt Stats:

Name: Snap of Skiers Pillows

Size: 20" x 20" (each)

Pattern credits: Amy Friend from During Quiet Time for her Vintage Skier Paper Pieced Block, the rest of the design is my own.

Piecing: Skiers, paper pieced using 60wt Presencia Thread, Patchwork and borders, pieced using 60wt Presencia thread

Batting: Quilter's Dream Select (pieced together scraps using batting tape)

Quilting: Quilted on my Grandma's Husqvarna Viking Sewing machine. Thread used white 60wt Presencia, light green 50wt presencia and 30wt Wonderfil Mirage variegated purple thread. 

Binding: Machine stitched. (The machine wasn't super happy about going through 8 layers of fabric and 3 layers of batting on the overlap of the envelope, but it survived)

Notes: I would have loved to make a quilt for my cousin and her new hubby as their wedding gift, but with both time and budget constraints pillows were a much better option. They are both great skiers, so when I saw the Vintage Skier Block by Amy Friend I knew I would be perfect. I was slightly intimidated by the tiny pieces but I went slow and used lots and lots of sewline gluestick glue to keep pieces in place while I stitched and finger pressed all seams really well. I am so excited that it worked and I am pretty sure I built my paper piecing skills by leaps and bounds. It was a super fun project and the wedding was beautiful.

Skier pillows at Mt. Norquay where the couple was married. Congrats!!!

Linking up with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday

Thanks for having a look
Leatina