Love to Read

 Project 14.4 had us making a project inspired by books. I started thinking about the many books I've read. The most rewarding of them all was reading to my children when they were younger, and now to my grandchildren. 

a very small selection of my grandchildren's favourites

For my project I decided to make a reading pillow for my youngest granddaughters. 

I appliqued the letters to the pocket

I printed the letters on some Steam-A-Seam 2 and followed the directions of simply peel, stick, cut and press. I did a buttonhole stitch using MonoPoly from Superior threads as I know the pillow will need to be able to be washed without worrying about the applique ever lifting off.

straight line quilting of the front

Bright and cheery fabric for the front of the pillow. 

I added a handle at the top to make it easier to carry around

The pillow is 16 inches square and I used a 14-inch pillow form to keep the pillow soft and comfy to snuggle up with a good book.

Project Quilting 14.3

 Challenge 3 of season 14, hosted by Kim Lapacek,  was the 54-40 or Fight block. We were to be inspired by traditional '54-40 or Fight block.' It consists of four-patches and triangle-in-a-square blocks. I choose to be more traditional with the block. 

first up do I paper piece or use the 'tri recs tool'

    I choose to use the tri recs tool to make the triangle-in-a-square blocks. 

blocks coming together

    For those of you who have read my blog before, you will notice not a bit of green in this project. This challenge project is for my daughter and her favourite colour is blue.

This was a quick project to piece so why did it take me until this morning to get it finished. I procrastinated over the quilting, my daughter didn't want it over quilted. 

I tried to keep it a little simpler

Straight lines and curves in the triangle-in-a-square blocks. Swirls in the squares of the lighter blue and more straight lines in the dark blue squares.

I didn't have enough of the dark blue I used in the topper for the binding 

I was 10 inches short of the dark blue to use as a binding, thankfully I had another piece of fabric that I think worked pretty darn good.

The finished topper is 20'' by 20'' and I used my favourite batting for table toppers Thermore by Hobbs.