Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Pillow #3
My personal Pillow A Month Challenge
Flower Collage


One of my Flickr contacts, Krista Withers, lolablueocean, does a lot of free piecing and improv stitching.  She created wonderful flowers that I immediately fell in love with.  You can see her flowers and improv here .

I just had to make some for myself.  I can't even imagine free piecing them, so I drew up a paper piecing pattern for mine.

I ran a test as a postcard before starting in on the pillow top.


I've mentioned before that my process of a creation is starting with an idea and from there, making it up as I go along. Very seldom do I start out with an entire plan.

It turned out that the piecing process I used to make the flowers allowed me to create a bit of a different look for each one. That was a fun surprise.  The background for the flowers actually is free pieced and improv as well as some applique.  Doing the background this way was a big challenge for me.  This was my first time playing around with that.  Some of the background fabrics I made myself (you can see how I made the fabrics here)  and others are purchased fabrics.

I quilted with meandering straight line angles (for lack of a better description).  I'm 50/50 on whether it's over quilted or not.  I like it to look quilted but I do not like it when the quilting over powers the fabrics and design.



This pillow front sat for more than a week before I finally decided on the binding and the back.  I'm very stingy with my text fabrics and didn't want to "waste" a big chunk on that back side.  Feeling wild I decided to include the zipper as part of the design.


Me and my seam ripper became more than just good friends during this pillow creation, but I'm real happy with the way it turned out. 
It's my fave so far!


Thanks Krista for your awesome inspirational improv!

Annie
 
This pillow project is linked to Fabric Fascination's 12-Months Linking Party Check out all the fab creations!



20 comments:

Karen said...

Oh how wonderful is this!? I want to know your pp design secrets as I tend to make it harder doing my own. I love this :)

carol said...

It's my FAV so far too! Awesome, simply awesome! I've also been thinking about Krista's free pieced flowers. Now I'll have to try it for sure!! (Love the background too.)

Cindy Sharp said...

Beautiful! If you fall asleep on it will you get zipper face?

Stray Stitches (Linda G) said...

Absolutely gorgeous!!! I like the back too!

Anonymous said...

Annie, I love it! The quilting is just right-and all those angles are perfect!

Also love the background fabrics on the front. Mmmmm...

Barb said...

I have to say that I love love love this pillow....

Gill said...

This is gorgeous!
I love it!

Snoodles said...

Wonderful design...I'll have to leave the paper piecing to others - I'm rotten at it! LOL Love how your flowers' background is improv, too. Really nice!

Mrs.Pickles said...

very pretty!

JudyCinNC said...

This is so gorgeous and I loved learning of your process... makes me want to create... Thanks for the inspiration. Judy C

Elsa said...

It's so beautiful! love the flowers.

Doris said...

That pillow is so cool, I had to "pin" it, ;-)

waggonswest said...

I am very impressed with your improvisational piecing for the background. I've just started experimenting with it and it is harder than it looks. Yours is fantastic. I love the flowers as well. I had to re-read a couple times to figure out that pillow number two was really the back of pillow number one. Amazing.

Lesley said...

Your pillow is exquisite! Each month I look forward to your "pillow reveal".

heartsease54 said...

This is just beautiful, you are soooo talented.

edyB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
edyB said...

Oh!Yes! It is the favorite ... so far! Can't wait to see the next one. Love the postcard, too.
Carry on....

Sparky said...

Oh wow...is is March already...number 3 and we are in FEB...wow, you sew impress me...this one btw is just lovely and cute, and sew you...

KatieQ said...

Your pillow is fabulous! I love how you used the zipper as a design element.

FabricFascination said...

What a great pillow. I definitely want to try that technique. The results are fabulous.

Thanks so much for linking to the 12 month challenge.