wip Wednesday 02.29.2012

I did quite a bit of hand quilting over the last few days - it's pretty fun and relaxing, but soooo much slower than machine quilting would have been.

I decided to hand quilt my Granny Square quilt. I'm about half way done and I'm totally in love with how it looks. Here's a little sneak peak.

I went ahead and hand quilted the front of my partner's pillow for the Pillow Talk Swap, too. It took me forever to decide on how to quilt it, there was a lot of sewing and ripping involved. I finally like the way it looks and I'm hoping to have it finished soon.

I also finished 2 wonky star blocks for our Trust Circle of do. Good Stitches.

I love how pretty and girly they are. I really have to make a wonky star quilt one of these days. Until then I will keep enjoying looking at all the gorgeous star quilts out there on Pinterest and Flickr.

So, that's it for this week's WIPs. I'm linking this up to Lee's WIP Wednesday. Can't wait to see what other talented quilters are working on.

I hope you have a fantastic, creative, leap year Wednesday. Svetlana

runner's bib pillow

Hello, happy Tuesday, everyone!!!

Yesterday was a very special day - it was my husband's 40th birthday. I don't know about you, but I have the hardest time getting presents for my husband. He's not picky, he usually asks for something very practical and useful, but I always feel like I should also come up with something he is not expecting.

After weeks of thinking I finally had an idea. If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that my husband is a runner, a very serious and dedicated runner. He loves it, running to him is what sewing is to me. So, this was my plan. Replicate the runner's bib from his very first marathon and turn it into a pillow. Pretty simple, right? Well, it was tricky. I used raw edge applique, reverse applique, freezer paper tracing and fabric markers. And this is what it looks like now. What do you think?

I'm quite happy with the way it looks, but I might have to go back and redo the name of the marathon, maybe stitching over the fabric marker would make it look more polished.

I used gray quilter's linen to frame "the bib", and did some straight line quilting to add a little texture. I also hand quilted around the white fabric (it's just hard to see in this picture). I used the same quilter's linen for the back of the pillow, did very simple quilting, and finished the whole thing off by adding an invisible zipper. It's not perfectly invisible, but pretty close and I'm OK with that.

So, that was my handmade present for my husband. It's only a second thing I made for him (the first one was this pouch) and I'm totally out of ideas. At least there's plenty of time to think before Christmas rolls around.

Have a wonderful day, friends. Svetlana