I decided my couch looked kind of funny with one fall pillow (my Autumn Star Pillow) and one regular pillow. So I made a friend for Autumn Star.

I wanted to use the same general fabrics but not the same design, so I made a couple columns of flying geese. I chose to paper piece them because I’m just so much more exact when I use that technique. I didn’t make a tutorial but I did make a PDF of the templates I whipped up to use. You can download it here.

I was able to fit 10 on one sheet of paper but you’ll need to print 2 sheets if you want to make a pillow like mine. You’ll have a few leftover. If you’ve never paper pieced before – these are easy! I have a tutorial on the technique here.

I think they look happy together!

A few weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and cut into the Liberty of London fabrics I bought 2 years ago. (Well, start planning the cutting anyway.) Sometimes I don’t know why I buy “fancy” fabric because I just get some sort of fabric-paralysis and become too scared to use it. Two years of waiting was long enough.

Voiles from top to bottom: Fuchsia, Rose Pink, Coral, Gold, Yellow, Cilantro, Green, Water, Seafoam, Heather, Purple, Sky

I thought if I was going to use these lovelies, I needed something soft and silky to go with them. I bought a variety of Free Spirit voile fabrics. I love voile…but it does pose some challenges. It is a bit slippery to work with, so I just pin more and try to pay extra attention when piecing. I purchased these from Hawthorne Threads. Pink Castle Fabrics also has some voile solids available.

They looks so pretty together.

I have started some paper piecing…future pattern maybe?

Can’t wait to show you more soon!

Updated to add some works in progress from today.

Piece, Piece.

Trim, Trim.

I just finished up my Ice Pops quilt this week. You can see more about the pattern in this blog post. I’m very happy with how this one turned out – especially because my husband really likes it and he is just a tiiiiiny bit picky.

The print fabric in this quilt is from Art Gallery’s Rhapsodia line. The light putty sashing is FreeSpirit Designer Solid Sand Dune and I never did figure out the dark putty color. That’s what I get for not labeling the fabric when it arrives!

I quilted this one in a couple of ways. First, I pebble quilted all the white areas. As usual I way underestimated the amount of time this technique takes. But I am really happy with the results – it was worth the time. After I took these photos I washed the quilt and the pebble quilting looks SO great after a wash, I am very tempted to do an entire quilt this way. I’m sure I’ll be exhausted while I am doing the actual quilting…but boy would it make an amazing quilt.

Then in the lighter putty sashing I straight-line quilted lines 1/4″ apart. I don’t often mix two types of quilting but I am happy I did with this quilt.

I am heading out of town on Saturday for a few days…I’m bringing my computer but not sure if I will be blogging. If not, I hope everyone here in the USA has a wonderful 4th of July holiday!

Last week when I posted my Cutting Edge quilt, I mentioned that it was the first of two quilts I made for Quilt Market. Today I’m happy to share the second. This quilt was made for Ty Pennington’s booth at market using his latest fabric line from Ty Pennington Impressions.

I am having trouble finding any 2012 swatches on the Impressions website or Free Spirit/Westminster Fibers website, but you can see some the fabrics up close on the quilt photos. I chose to work with a lot of the bright colors in the line…no big surprise! This quilt was exciting to make because even non-quilty people know who Ty Pennington is, right?

Once again, Lee was nice enough to take a picture of the quilt in the booth for me at Quilt Market – thanks Lee!

This quilt is made from square blocks, but I set the inner squares and crosses on point. The blocks are 14″ squares and the full quilt measures 56″ x 56″. I quilted it with free motion meandering.

I made this quilt and my Cutting Edge quilt over a period of less than two weeks. It was exciting and stressful to be a little part of the Quilt Market rush. I also wrote a pattern for this quilt that was handed out at market and if I see it online, I will update this post with a link.