Simply Solids

The top is done! Whoo! I had considered making this a mini quilt instead of a pillow, but my spray baste went crazy and left spotting on the backing. Quilting karma? User error? Oh well.

So this is a design of my own creation, if you'll remember. As such, I was making it all up as I went along. This led to some definite problems. First of all, my initial template was messed up. Once all the blue shapes were all pieced together I sewed them into columns of 4. This was a mistake. I wanted the gray portions to be a single piece for each column, but this made it much, much more difficult to sew. Why do I always make it harder on myself?!

I naively thought that since it was just zig-zagged straight lines that I was sewing that it would be easy. After all, I've sewn curves. And I'm still alive. Pins didn't help so I abandoned them in favor of wrangling the fabric myself.

I prevailed and finished the top, pressing out as many wrinkles as possible. The wrinkles were mostly in the gray sections where the diamond tips met. Sigh...

I quilted straight lines in the skinny white spaces with white thread and then quilted diamonds in the gray space with gray thread. I was really unsure of what I wanted to do in the gray spaces; it was an area with excellent potential for a quilting motif! I might go back and add small diamonds in a turquoise thread. Because I'm wild like that.

It's a shame this will be a pillow because the quilting looks pretty cool on the back!

Next time that I make this [and I hope there will be a next time because I really like the design] I plan to piece in rows instead of columns. So each blue shape will be accompanied by a bottom half of a diamond and a top half [it will look like an hourglass]. Hopefully this will alleviate the wrinkling.

Now I just have to actually create the pillow and finish up my mustache cross stitch and this For The Love of Solids package will be ready to send out. Good thing too, because the Pillow Talk Swap is really underway and my next design is even more complicated than this. Clearly I've lost my mind :P

I'm linking up with all sorts of people today: Sew Modern Monday at Canoe Ridge Creations, Manic Monday at SewHappyGeek, and Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story. Great places that you should check out! :)