Paris Markets Pillow

I have just finished my pillow talk pillow and it has been packaged and posted along with some goodies to its mystery recipient.

I have enjoyed the journey on this pillow although taking pics in gloomy light has been tough so I have had to employ electric light and a little photo editing so you can the prints and colours.

I like to challenge myself in swaps like this one which are of such a ridiculously high standard and the construction was all about the inset seam: 8 in each block, 4 blocks and then 4 around the centre square so 36 in total.  I found the block in this 163 Patchwork (details in the link).

The Yuwa Paris map print was the inspiration for this pillow.  I don't know the name of this block but it reminded me of pathways.  I imagined my swap partner, French newspaper in hand, wandering the streets of Paris, starting in a central square...

and walking through shops and markets picking up treasures along the way, a little kitchenalia here, 

a decorative item pour la maison...

a coffee pot...

and of course, les boutons!

I kept the quilting light and simple, and used the indispensable fusible fleece, Vilene H640 which is a must for pillow making, it gives softness and structure and can cope with zips and binding without being too bulky.  I get through a lot of this stuff, I cannot recommend it more highly!

Straight-line quilting, vibrant Liberty Bloomsbury prints and an inset zip for the back.

Vintage diagonal check for the binding, the look of bias without none of the tricky cutting.  My swap partner has been a pleasure to sew for, easy preferences and lots of creative ideas.   Bringing together all those fabric scraps, new and old, gifts and swaps and weaving a narrative together has to be my favourite creative process.  This pillow is 20 x 20" and is winging its way to a new home!

Pillow talk

Are you ready for a little pillow talk... I hope you can tell I am using my most alluring voice for this!  Yeah right!  This is really a post about friendship.  Many of you have seen this pillow before and I always feel a little guilty about reposting an item but I wanted to take part on Brigitte's feature so here goes.

This pillow was a house warming present for Ayumi on her big move back to Japan.  So why this design? Having got caught up in the traditional blocks of The Farmer's Wife quilt-a-long, I found many of my favourites were friendship blocks and I started looking for more- 5,500 Quilt Block Designs was a great source!  The pillow features 9 different friendship block designs.  My favourite is in the centre, the corners all feature an X type design and I balanced out the other blocks in a + pattern.  The brightness and the business of the fabrics make the blocks merge but I have cropped a few so you can see individual blocks

Each block has a mini theme going on.  This block has a sweet food theme.

The top one with the tea pot is about home, comfort and tea!

The bottom block is  all about text and a love of typography.

Ayumi loves pink and I like pink/green together so I set out to see if I could make the whole thing work in a limited palette.  There is a mix of modern and vintage fabric something we both like and the design had a simple lattice quilting- there was enough going on with the fabrics

Pillows make great presents so if you want to be inspired in time for Christmas, head over to Brigitte's blog and have a look at the other designs for this month and previous months- there is a lot of inspiration to be had and just about time to enter your own- I day 13 hours when I last looked!