Welcome to Thank Goodness It's Finally Finished! That definitely applies to the finish I have to share today...I pieced the top for it back in 2018 and it has just been sitting in a cupboard ever since. But now it is finished!
The front of the cushion is all crazy, crumb pieced HSTs that were bonus HSTs from making my
Murrina quilt. That quilt involved crumb piecing blocks and then adding snowball corners to them, so I decided to rescue those triangles that would normally be cut off and thrown out. I use Bonnie Hunter's
Triangle Buddy method to make those bonus HSTs a useable size.
I even pieced the HSTs together into the top right away! And then I didn't do anything else with it for 4 years. Sigh.
Last year, during the inaugural WIPS-B-GONE, I tackled and finished two big projects - my 2020 temperature quilt and my dragon cross stitch. This year I don't have any projects that have that same feeling of absolutely-must-finish, but there are many, many projects that have been hanging around for a long time. So, instead of a major project that I work on most days of the challenge, I'm working my way through smaller projects. A big part of why this one languished so long was that I couldn't decide what to do with it. Mini quilt? Cushion cover? Add borders or something else to make it bigger? Finally I just decided to go with a cushion cover and it can live in my sewing room. Once I decided that, it was easy to actually get working on it.
At 14" square, it only took a few minutes to baste and then I was ready for the quilting. I used Aurifil 2260 50 wt and quilted switchbacks in the red/pink, with an exaggerated swoop at the corners to help change direction smoothly.
That left the crumb pieced triangles to really puff up. Between the puffed up rows and the quilting, the pillow has fabulous texture!
I had enough of the red/pink to use for the envelope back of the pillow. I should have cut the two pieces a little bigger, but for some reason I can never remember how much overlap you need. They just barely overlap in the middle, but they do overlap, so I'm calling it good.
I even thought to add a label to one corner!
I don't actually have any pillow inserts, so I made my own. I used the same fabric for the insert as for the back of the cushion. I had read that not stitching perfect 90° corners makes for better corners after turning the pillow, so I decided to give it a try. I stopped stitching just a stitch or two more than ¼" away from the edge, then turned and stitched a couple of stitches diagonally across the corner before turning the rest of the way to stitch the next side.
As an aside, if you're thinking that my tension looks off, you're right! I set my tension to 6 when doing fmq, which I had just finished for the front of the cushion cover, and sometimes I forget to set it back to 4 when I switch back to piecing. Oops! Usually I catch it before there is photographic evidence of my mistake, lol.
I trimmed the corner just beyond the stitching and turned the pillow right side out. The corners poked out much nicer than before, when I would stitch the corner at a perfect right angle. I did do the same for the cushion cover, too, but didn't think to take pictures until I was doing the insert.
I was going to cut up batting scraps to fill the pillow, but then I found half a pillow I once bought to use for stuffing (I think that was for
these pillows I made the child care littles for Christmas), so I used that instead. I thought I might still need some batting scraps to finish it off, but it was exactly the right amount of stuffing to give me a nice, plump cushion.
So far this is my only finish for WIPS-B-GONE 2022, but I've been making lots of progress on other projects. We still have ⅔ of the challenge left, so if you have a few neglected WIPS sitting in cupboards, closets or boxes you can
join in here.
And now it's your turn! What have you finished this week? Link it up below so we can celebrate the finish with you. And be sure to visit some of the other links and celebrate their finishes, too!
Sometimes deciding what to do with our smaller projects and scraps really is the hardest part. The pillow looks great, and I am going to tuck away your tip about those corners for future use myself. Smart!
ReplyDeleteWonderful quilting!!! Fun finish, Leanne!!!
ReplyDeleteI love the crumb piecing in the pillow - great finish
ReplyDeleteYeah for a finish! It's so easy to put something aside to deal with later....ha ha ha
ReplyDelete