Cone Flower Pillow

This is my version of a cone flower. The pillow is like all the others I've been making. The size is 18 inches by 18 inches.

The fabrics are all kinds of beautiful batiks and the ruffle is a black and white stripe.

The background of this pillow is especially pretty. A wash of beautiful colors blending like watercolors and it has a spider web of gold over it that doesn't show up in the photo, but shines very nicely when the morning sun lights up my living room.

I've outlined the petals, cone and stem with matching silk ribbon making this pillow the easiest one so far. Actually, I made it before the "Squirt the Cat" pillow, and was kind of just finding my way with the colors and applique work.

The most tedious part was gathering the ruffle. I've never enjoyed making gathers - all those pins, trying to divide the fabric evenly and making it lay just right.

I remember making my very first project for 7th grade sewing class and we had to make a skirt with gathered fabric at the waistband. Ugh! I remember it being voluminous! I had so much fabric to bunch around that 22 inch waist, I just got really tired of dividing it up into halves, quarters, eights and sixteenths and even more than that, just to get it evenly spaced!

When I finally got it all to fit, put in the zipper and button and tried it on, I yelped when I bent over because I had actually sewn pins into place on the waist band!!! Ouch! I got a "B" and never, ever wore the darn ugly thing.

I'm amazed that the project didn't turn me off completely to sewing forever. But something inside me was fascinated with the idea of laying out a pattern on the straight of grain and actually ending up with a piece of clothing I could wear. I persisted and that summer made several tops - all with gathers along the hem - that looked absolutely adorable with shorts and dungarees. (that's what we called jeans back then)

From that point on, I took my babysitting money and would buy fabric for 50 cents a yard and patterns for a quarter and sewed, sewed, sewed. By high school I was good enough at it to make several prom dresses that I was very proud to wear. I made a wedding dress for my roommate in nursing school and eventually made two for myself.

When I look back on my work these days, I am amazed. I can look at what I've created and sometimes wonder, "who made this?" I mean really, who did this? How could I have been so good at this 40 years ago when I am still wondering, "how shall I make pillows today?"

Do you ever wonder how you got to be so good at something that it amazes you too?

Squirt the Cat Pillow

Of course, now that I had a great photo of Squirt the Cat, I just had to use it! I printed it on cotton and found I had some really beautiful Batik fabric with all the colors so complimentary to the photo. I cut it a little off skew and put a dark frame around it making the crispness of the white stand out. Below the photo I had some fun making a few appliques that mimicked the fabric on the back and then added a fringe of beads along the bottom of the picture frame.

For the back I used a coordinating batik and another photo of Squirt the Cat. The frame on this is a bright pink organza.

The finish is the black and white ruffle making all the colors really stand out.

This is my favorite pillow now.

Applique Pillows #1

As hard as it is to believe, in all the years of sewing, quilting, machine embroidery and making things out of fabric, I have never turned out any pillows!

I am amazed. And, now that I have decided to spark up the living room with some good housekeeping and new slipcovers (soon to be ironed and applied), I have discovered a new fun way to spend my sewing time.

I'm using some gorgeous batik fabrics and am linking each pillow by using some black and white fabric to frame each one. This is the first one I finished.

It was a whole lot of fun to make the applique. Another newly fresh discovery for me. I've always hesitated doing much applique work because it seemed so laborious and I just don't like to see the heavy zigzag outline on everything. However, this time I just took out some Alieen's Hot Stitch Fusible Web that I've had hanging around for at least 10 years and I free hand drew the leaves and spiral. Now I really don't know why I drew the spiral, but that's what happened, so I went with it.

It's really easy to do applique this way!!! I love it! I pressed my drawings onto the back of the fabrics, cut out around the pencil line and placed it on the background batik. I didn't want to zigzag anything, so I rummaged through my drawers and found some fuzzy yarns that coordinated nicely and just used nylon thread to nail them down onto the edges of the appliques. It didn't take much time at all and I didn't ever use stabilizers for the back of the sewing area.

Amazingly, it didn't crinkle, pull, or otherwise distort the fabric. Again, I was amazed. All the books say stabilizers are a must, but I guess the applique fairies were with me that day and I got a beautiful result. It's a shame you can't see the fuzziness of the yarns.

After that, I wanted some sparkle, so I added hot fix Swarovski crystals. They don't show up in the photo either, but it sure looks nice when the morning sun hits them. A fuzzy, wuzzy, sparkle, sparkle pillow!