Blogger's Pillow Party

Rachel at Stitched in Color is hosting a Blogger's Pillow Party, and I thought it would be fun to play along.

There are some AMAZING pillows entered, many of which are already in my Flickr faves.

At the November meeting of the LAMQG, we signed up for a Holiday Swap. We drew names to find out who our partner would be, then we got together with them to find out their likes and dislikes. When I got together with Angela, she was kind of vague, but she said she wanted something that could be out all the time - not just for the holidays. She also said she really loved Japanese fabric. That was pretty much it!

At first, I was really stumped, but I knew I needed to get some Japanese fabric, since I didn't have a good stash of it. I was hoping to get inspired by whatever fabric I picked out.

Thankfully, inspiration did hit me when I picked out some gorgeous patchwork Echino. I decided to make a pillow, because that's something that can definitely be out all the time.

I recently bought a circle cutter, and was eager to try it out. As I was cutting the circles, I made sure to not just get one of the patchwork squares, but to include a little bit of the neighboring patches. I loved the look of the patchwork inside the circles! To highlight the look of the patchwork, I did a little machine stitching on the lines. I did this with three circles of different sizes.

It was my first time working with circles, and it was (I think) my second time doing applique, so I was a little nervous (it was also my first time working with linen, but I had been looking for a project to use it with).

I bought a coordinating Echino print to go with the patchwork one, so I framed my circles with that, and also put a strip of it on the back.

I was so in love with this pillow and wanted to keep it for myself! Since I didn't know alot about Angela (that November meeting was only her second meeting ever), I really didn't know if this was up her alley. She seemed to like it when I gave it to her at the December meeting, but we didn't get a chance to really talk about it. She told me later that the first time her husband saw it, his comment was, "Wow...that is so you!" which made me really happy.