Create! A Project a Day - February 1, 2 & 3

Another Kelly, over at Thinking Out Loud, started a Flickr group dedicated to doing something crafty every day in February.  It sounded good to me, so I signed up!

On the 1st, I made a new camera strap.

Um, this was supposed to be for someone else, but after I took these pictures, I put it on my own strap to see how it fit, and it was S-N-U-G!  I was wrestling with it, and pulling it, and tugging, and finally I thought, "Hey, maybe I'll just keep this one, and make a duplicate!"  After all, the camera strap I made almost a year ago is great and all, but I never really felt it was "me."  This one is much more me than that one was!  So I checked out the VW fabric and realized that my little scrap of it was not going to be enough to make an exact duplicate.   But I'm keeping this one anyway. 

Oops! 

It really is stuck. 

The only way it's coming off is if I cut it off!

Really...I promise!!

Okay, let's just move on...

On the 2nd, I began a pillow cover.  I really wanted something that was for Valentine's Day that I could put on our couch, but I didn't want to spend any money.  So I raided my scraps, for the first time ever!  It was challenging for me - kind of like a really hard jigsaw puzzle.  But at the same time, it was kind of cool.  Some pieces fit perfectly together.  Others needed to be trimmed to the smaller piece I was sewing it to.  All in all, it turned out to be a great use of scraps, and it was a really good experience for me.  Now I want to see what else I can come up with strictly scraps! 

Oh, and the linen?  That's completely and totally scrimped and scrapped and pieced so it just fit the size I needed it to.  I couldn't believe it.  I literally do not have one scrap of that linen left!  If I was making this for someone else, I wouldn't have pieced the linen as much as I did...but since it's for us and our couch, I figured there was no harm in that.

Today, the 3rd, I began the quilting on the pillow cover.  At first, I didn't know what kind of quilting I wanted to do.  And then it came to me - HEARTS!  But me and my free motion skills weren't exactly on speaking terms.  So I practiced, and messed around with the tension on my machine until I found where it should be.  When I started the quilting on it, I couldn't stop!  I was having so much fun with these little hearts!  So I decided to quilt the hearts in off-white within the red and pink pieced part, and then use pink thread for the hearts on the linen.  I did each heart three times to give it more of a sketchy look.

So I took advantage of every spare second I had today, and worked on this thing until I finished it!  I just have to say that I really LOVE the way this turned out!

I also added a little applique heart on the back.  I used fusible batting so it puffs out a little.

So, that's me catching up for this month's daily craftiness.  I probably won't post every day, but I do plan on doing something crafty everyday, and then just catching it all up in one post like this every few days.  You should play along, too! 

I call this pillow "My Scrappy Valentine."

Oh, and I might as well do the Blogger's Pillow Party again!  I didn't foresee myself making another pillow anytime soon, but I guess the timing is good!