first finish of the year

2015 is going to be the year of finishing UFOs (unfinished objects) and WIPs (works in progress) here at elsie's girl! Since I am great at starting new projects, but not so great at finishing them, I've got quite a (literal) pile-up of projects in various stages of completion taking up space in the sewing room.

Riding the wave of post-Christmas holiday cheer I decided to tackle these two Christmas pillows first and finished them last week. The unquilted pillow tops had been stuck in the UFO pile since December 2012.

My quilt guild (Crystal Lake MQG) is hosting a 2015 UFO Challenge with prize drawings for completed projects throughout the year, and I've registered six UFOs so far. I could register sooo many more, but I'm really trying to be realistic about what I can actually finish before October and not fail miserably at this challenge!  These two pillows are my first UFO Challenge finish, so I'm off to a good start :)

But back to the pillows. The first one was made from a Jaybird Quilts pattern "Candy Dish" and measures 20" square.  The pattern actually makes a 16" square pillow, but it was easy enough to add extra rows and columns to make the 20" covering. All the blocks were cut from leftover fabric from the "It's the Hap-Happiest Season of All" quilt made in 2011 (the back of that very quilt is seen in this photo!)

It is simply straight line quilted with a pale robin's egg blue thread, and as I write this I see that I missed a row of quilting on the right edges of the two red blocks in the center of the photo. Oh well, finished is better than perfect, right?!

My second pillow was patterned after this sweet one from Amy at Nana Company. She designs and makes the loveliest projects :) Mine measures 16" x 26" and is also made with scraps from the same 2011 Christmas quilt.

I added straight line quilting in the same pale blue thread here within the colored fabric blocks, while hand embroidery of the lyrics from my favorite Christmas song fills in the white strips.

It's been a long time since I did this embroidery so I'm not sure what specific DMC floss color I used, but I believe it's only one or two strands in a stem stitch. I can only manage two embroidery stitches - stem and french knot - and those are the only stitches you see here! I seem to remember using more strands of floss for a bit and then taking it out because the stitching was too bulky. So don't be afraid to rip out and start over if you don't like the results. Embroidery is slow work for me, but I'm so glad I stuck with it long enough to finish these lyrics - to me they are the best part of the pillow!

Both pillows have zipper backings. The square one is made from a couple of flannel pieces I had saved from the 2011 Christmas quilt (the front seen here) and has a standard 18" centered zipper insertion.

Because I had a larger piece of this backing fabric, I was able to add a hidden 14" standard zipper very near one of the short ends. I always use this tutorial from House on Hill Road for hidden zipper pillow backings.

One of the requirements of the guild UFO challenge is that when you finish a project it must be shown at the next guild meeting to be eligible for the prize drawings. So I'll be taking these to our February meeting and then packing them away until Thanksgiving weekend much later this year. Chances are excellent that I'll forget all about these pillows until then, and it will truly be like Christmas when we decorate again in late November and I rediscover them!

One UFO down, five to go!

Valentine Button Heart - a free pattern for you

Happy February!

I created this little piece of stitchy love and wrote a pattern that I'm sharing here with you.

happy holiday button trees

I had some girlfriends over this past weekend for a little crafting party, and take a look at this cute project we worked on - Christmas Button Trees! They were so easy and fun to make. All you need are some holiday fabric scraps, buttons, and embroidery floss to make your very own.

Here's mine all stitched and ready to be framed...

This was our prototype that Lorrie completed last year and gave to a good friend. The pattern comes from a 2011 Better Homes and Gardens magazine called "Holiday Crafts", and the finished tree fits in a frame with an 8" x 10" opening. Lorrie purchased a white frame from a local craft store and painted and distressed it to showcase her beautiful work.

We each put our own personality into our individual projects, and they all turned out beautiful! Here is Wendy's glammed-up tree on a dramatic black print background...

Kelly's traditional red and green tree - she put a bird on it! And she chose a different embroidered message to personalize it even more...

Andrea's whimsical snowman-topped tree...

And Paige's red batik tree complete with bling and garland!

Lorrie also made a new tree to keep for herself this year - can you believe all those buttons?! I love her "Swell Noel" embroidery!

Here we are hard at work at my kitchen table...

Dixie is under the table hoping for dropped food, but she only got stray buttons and fabric scraps!

The mess necessary for creativity...

Of course we had to partake in some festive holiday beverages! These pretty drinks are Poinsettias - roughly equal parts Prosecco and cranberry juice - a little bit of pink bubbly cheer...

An hors d'oeuvres potluck to keep us sustained during our hours of crafting...

And the best for last - a delicious red velvet cake from Lorrie...

Such fun to spend a December weekend day with these great girls! I hope you are all able to spend some time with friends during this busy time of year :)

FiestaWare pillow for Lynn

My good friend Lynn has been hard at work designing a new logo for my blog. All the tweaking I've asked her to do, combined with my very limited technical knowledge, have amounted to a greater task than she probably expected. She's just fine-tuning the size now in order to get the header loaded. Very exciting!

When we initially talked about this project, I asked what I could pay her in return, and she immediately came back with, "I'd love an Elsie's Girl original pillow." Well, I can certainly do that!! So here it is....

Lynn loves FiestaWare colors - particularly peacock blue, grass green, red, and sunshine yellow. And flowers. Lots of flowers. She has the ding-dong cutest cottage house full of the perfect combination of antiques and modern touches, and she recently revamped her in-home office area to accommodate her two computers. They now sit on a long, skinny toboggan mounted upside down to the wall. How clever is that??

I debated long and hard about the perfect pillow to make for her, and finally landed on this Dresden flower made from Heather Bailey Pop Garden and Bijoux fabrics. The background and other solids are Kaffe Fassett shot cottons in Indigo, Lime, Scarlett, Lemon, and Jade.

I added some embroidery to the center flower to punch it up a bit - the added texture just really makes that fussy-cut flower stand out. Initially I had machine-quilted around the center flower petals, but I didn't like that look combined with the embroidery. I ripped out that quilting and hand-quilted in the same space with DMC floss. The needle holes from the machine quilting made the perfect markings for spacing my hand-quilting stitches!

There is a zippered backing for easy removal to wash the pillow cover. The shot cotton felt a little flimsy for a zipper, so I added some lightweight fusible interfacing to the entire pillow backing to make it more durable.

The pillow looks pretty great in her cozy, sunny, family room area. I'm sooo happy that she loves it, and I'm even happier about the fabulous new logo she's made for me! I can't wait to show it to you :)