Left Over Monday Yellow Brick Road Pillow

I made my husband’s Aunt Candy a quilt using the Yellow Brick Road Pattern from Atkinson Designs.  I found four leftover blocks and some extra backing fabric (oops…3 years later!) and decided to make a throw pillow for her.

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I sewed the four blocks together into a large square, added a two inch blue border to all sides and pinned up a quilt sandwich!

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Deep breath, time to machine quilt!  I always start with a straight stitch because it’s easy and builds up my confidence.

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With my confidence soaring, I quilted some loops and flowers to highlight the fabrics.

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Some of my stitches didn’t quite turn out as I wanted them to!  Oops!  This section didn’t feed through my machine smoothly and I have a big jumble of crooked somethings!  Oh well, I chalked this up to a learning experience and kept quilting!

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I changed thread color to yellow and made a plaid pattern on this white fabric to help disguise the thread glob.  Not too bad if I do say so myself!

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I like this loopy stitch and plan to use it in other projects!

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Once I finished quilting, I trimmed my blue borders to 1 inch and used a 1/2 inch seam allowance to attach an envelope back to the pillow.  As you can see, I had a lot of extra backing fabric on hand! This pillow measures 18 inches square.

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Here’s a side view.

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This looked great on our sofa, but I mailed it off to Aunt Candy.  She called to say she loved it!  Yet another set of leftover blocks put to good use!

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Misc. Monday Bunny Pin Cushion

It’s been a crazy busy week. You see, I have a full time job.  I run a real estate company. I’m raising a 15-year-old. I keep watch for my elderly parents. I’m trying to log my 12,000 steps per day. And it’s cold outside. I know we all are wearing multiple hats and truth be told all of those “things” I have to do bring my joy in many, many ways.

But sometimes, my energy stores are low and whipping up a leftover or two gives me a little breather. Tonight I transformed frozen Christmas ham into potato ham and cheese soup for dinner. I also transformed a mini ceramic bunny into a pin cushion. I bought the bunny last summer at a garage sale after I saw this idea all over Pinterest. A snowy evening, a scrap of fabric and some stuffing transform this 25 cent find into an adorable sewing companion.

Homemade pin cushion

This little guy was freed during a garage sale raid in the heat of the summer. Who knows how long he had been in storage? He seems content to hang around my sewing room.

The soup was awesome too!