Pillows for the wedding quilt

I thought it would be rather nice to have some pillows to go along with the wedding quilt that I made for my sister-in-law's sister.  I also thought it would be fun to work on something a little different this month.

I made two pillowcases for normal pillows.  I didn't have enough Kona Grellow, so they're reversible.

I also made some covers for throw pillows.  I only gave her three pillows, figuring she could either swap them out or buy more as desired.

First up we have the light grey (Kona steel).  It mirrors the light grey quilting on the quilt with the one inch square squares.  It is in a different setting though.  Also, I had to use to different pieces to make a piece large enough and it seems as though they might not actually have been the same color.  This was very evident after it came out of the wash and I may have freaked out a bit.  Now that it's dry it isn't nearly as noticeable, but it is still there.  The dark grey (Kona iron) and saffron are just enlarge copies of the quilting from the quilt.  The saffron one does have a single white loopy strand running through it.  It's subtle.

The other three I played with a bit more.  The dark grey doesn't have any quilting.  The white has a meander in three different colors, and they all overlap each other.  The saffron one has their monogram, which shows up because of microquilting straight lines around the letters.  There is also a dark strip on the right where I used a different color thread for a bit.

I think my favorites are the white one and the dark grey with quilting.  I'm pretty happy with how the monogram turned out, but the thicknesses of the letters are a bit wobbly.

This was my December goal.  I didn't finish in time to give it as a Christmas present, but I did finish with plenty of time by the end of the month!

2017 goals

Goal time.  It's fun to think about goals.

I took a look at last year's goals and am happy to say that I most hit all of them.  The first one says that I wanted to average 15 WIPs and I really just got down to 15 WIPs, but I'm still going to call it a win.  (I also have some ideas floating around that I want to put on the January list, so I'll never see a list with 15.  But right now there are only 15.)

Those small goals were good for me, but I'll admit I only really worked hard on the first one.  The others just came as a matter of course.  The goals for this coming year seem a bit bigger, as in I will need to think about them just a bit more, but will still be very manageable.

1. Get the WIP list down to 11.

2. Enter a quilt in a challenge or contest using one of my own designs.

3. Doodle quilting motifs from the AQS doodle a day...I'm not going to try for a certain number, but let's go with more than 12.  Twelve out of 365...ambitious, right?

4. Do a thorough cleaning at least once.  I tend to keep my areas messy but just shy of terrible, so I keep working instead of cleaning.

Sharing the goals with others here.

New Purse

I made myself a messenger bag about two years ago.  I like a lot, until about two months ago when the fraying and the stains started annoying me.  So I made a new one.

Here's the old one, for reference.

I used the same pattern.  I did change a few things.  I added a zipper pocket for the outside instead of an open pocket.  I realized in the last one that I like to keep my keys and phone in that pocket, so they're easy to find.  But then I'm a bit paranoid that they'll fall out.  So there is a little split pocket, one side for the keys and one side for the phone.

I also added an extra pocket inside.  Because you can't have too many pockets.

The outside is pretty tame, but I added some bright blue to the inside flap, leftover from my ironing board, and some fun orange triangles inside.  I am hoping the light inside will make it easy to find things. :D

HI quilt

My mother-in-law is making quilts for all of her grand kids, and my son was the next one up.  Since he knew that he had a quilt coming, he had lots of suggestions for the quilting - wires, spirals, circles - and then at the last minute he also added stars in there too.

I finally figured out a way to incorporate all his criteria while still having it flow together ok.  The Hs got straight lines.  Some of the lines have a slant to them, but wires aren't perfectly straight anyway.  I put spirals and pebbles in the inner border.  This removed a lot of the points when going from spiral to spiral because he didn't want that.

The outer border has loops, but not on the dolka dots.  I'm not sure whether I'm happy or not that he had so much to say about the quilting.

He saw it drying on the chair after the snow pictures and seemed unimpressed by the quilting.  The stars are variegated thread, and one leg always managed to be yellow and not show up very well.  The wires weren't wirey enough, but I think he was ok in the end with those.  He did like the borders.  He also really liked the soft back.  I expect that will make the quilt a winner for sure.

November accomplishments

1. A few simple pillows to go with the wedding quilt.  I'd like to make a few covers for throw pillows and two normal pillow cases.  It just seems needed to tie really complete the gift.  This is my December goal.

 
2. bee hive scrap something - baby girl quilt.  I finished the top.    I like how I was able to include elements of randomness and order in it.

 3. Aunt's quilt. The strips are almost all sewn together; I just have two rows left!  I'm not expecting this to be a Christmas present, but we'll have to see how timing goes.

 
4. Quilt HI quilt.  I just need to take some good pictures of it.  I missed my chance in the snow this past weekend, but hopefully more snow is coming soon.

Other items still waiting around.
5. scrap quilt #2.  
6. Scrap quilt.   
7. Simply solids bee quilt.     
8. Rainbow log cabin.  
9. Orphan rocket block.  
10. Jeweled floors.
11. New purse   
12. Lost piece (almost whole cloth quilt).    
13. Winter quilt.    
14. fabric from Christmas.    
15. A pillow with green/purple fabric.
16. Sunset wall hanging.  
17. Quilt nautical quilt.  

My goal was to get down to 15 items by January.  If I can finish the pillows and take pictures of the HI quilt and not add anything new, I'll just barely make it!