Cushion Covers Revealed!

I can finally show you the pillow I made for my partner in the Cushion Cover Swap on Craftster, because she received it yesterday!  Interestingly enough, I received from her yesterday too (even though I sent mine a week before she sent hers--what's up with that?), so I can also show you what she made for me.

In the swap, we all made covers to fit a 14" pillow form.  According to Maimy's questionnaire, she likes keys (among other things), and since she uses keys in her avatar, I used that as the subject of the cushion cover I made for her.   The colors are based on her preferences on her questionnaire, too. 

I have some brown fabric with keys on it, but I didn't want her pillow to be brown, so I traced them from that fabric and drew them onto the linen I used as the center of her pillow.  Then I outline-stitched each key, and looked at them for a while, before deciding that YES, I CAN fill in all ten keys with embroidery!

Each key took about 2 hours to embroider.  This was the first large embroidery project I've done, and I loved it!  It reminded me of coloring in a coloring book!  I am eager to do more embroidery projects, but at the moment I have a LARGE project with a ton of handwork that I am working on for the Invite Your Partner swap, so other things must wait a few more weeks until that is done.

After finishing the pillow top, I layered it with batting and backing, and hand-quilted around the edge of the linen.  Then I added a back, with a simple envelope closure (and a piece of velcro), and it was done!  Maimy says she loves it.  Yay!

And, here's what the talented Maimy sent to me, based on my love of koi and goldfish:

Isn't it gorgeous?  The lotus, and the head, fins, and center line of the fish are painted on using a hand-cut stencil.  The fish scales are a combination of embroidery, fabric, and beads, as you can see in the close-up below.

Here's the back of the cover, with another lotus.  I left the snap closure undone so you can see that she sewed on her personal label--that's so cool!

Thank you, Maimy, you did a fantastic job on my cushion cover, and I LOVE it!

Scrappy Swap Package

Today I will show you the rest of the package I sent to my partner in the Scrap Happy Swap on Craftster.

I wanted to get her color palette just right.  I didn't have enough yardage of the right colors in my stash, so I carefully examined the picture I had of her living room colors, and pulled a few fabrics from my stash that seemed just right.  Then I went to Joann's and spent a long time pulling bolts of fabric from the shelves and comparing them to my swatches.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of fabrics that would work, and I bought them all!  I got half-yards of everything except the two main blue fabrics that I used on the pillows (I got a yard of each of those, and used them all up!).  But first, the mug rug.  This is the front:

...and this is the back.  I have to say that I like the back better than the front!  I think the front is too busy, and you lose the circles with all the other fabrics competing for attention.  That's how it is sometimes when you are making something for the first time using an idea from your imagination; this time it didn't come out quite as great as I had hoped it would!

These pillow covers, on the other hand, exceeded my expectations!  They are large (17.5" square), made to fit on the pillow forms she was already using on her sofa.  This first one, with circles, was inspired by some quilts and fabrics I saw on her Pinterest.

I wanted to make the second pillow different from the first, but with a design that related to the first one, so I made it with these leaf shapes.  I spent a lot of time constructing both pillows carefully, with finished seams and a velcro closure on the back.  The circles and leaves were affixed with Heat n Bond lite, then I sewed around the edges to secure them.

I also made her one of my Scrappy Fabric Bracelets, (click on that for the tutorial) using one of her favorite phrases.  I went a little overboard crafting for her--and she went overboard for me too--so we've decided to request each other as partners in a future swap, because there are lots more things we would like to make for each other!