modern quilted pillow swap

I joined a really fun swap called Modern Quilted Pillow Swap a while back. It was quite an unusual swap. We did not get any partners assigned, we just made a pillow we wanted and then sent a picture of the finished pillow to our swap mama who posted it in the Flickr group. Everything was very secret and no one knew who made which pillow, or even who participated.  Then, when the deadline came, we voted on our favorite pillows. Now the voting is over and we got a green light to post about our projects as we are all anxiously waiting to get our favorite pillows in the mail.

I used Mary's tutorial and made this pillow for the swap. It was one of those projects I wanted to try for quite a while, it involved freezer paper piecing as well as sewing curves. I must say, it was a lot of fun, and Mary's tutorial was so well written that even though it was my first time doing freezer paper piecing I had no major issues or hiccups along the way.

I had a very hard time deciding how to quilt this guy. The pillow top was already so busy and I worried that an all-over quilting would just make it all jumbled together.

At the end, I decided to do some hand quilting using red perle cotton around the biggest circle. I did simple running stitch with  a few x stitches to add some interest.

I did a zipper closure on the back of the pillow and bound it using a pretty red and white tiny polka dot fabric. This pillow cover can fit either a 16" x 16" or 18" x 18" pillow form, depending on how plump my partner wants it. It's now ready to be sent off to my partner who I'm sure will give it a nice home.

Thanks for stopping by, friends. Svetlana