Hello!

Every Monday of the 31 Day Blog Challenge I’m going to do a quick wrap up of my sewing from the week before.

This past week I continued to work on the holiday gift exchange item for the Corvallis Modern Quilt Guild. It’s a secret swap so I don’t know who has my name and my partner doesn’t know I have her name. We were given a list of options to choose from and one my partner’s items she choose was a complex tote. What makes a complex tote? Pockets, either slip pockets or zipper pockets. The pattern I chose has both.

I used the down time I had Friday and Saturday to finish cutting out all the pieces. There was a quick trip to my LQS and a big box fabric store for supplies on Saturday. I ran out of fabric for the interior pockets but I have massive quantities of the lining fabric. Oh well, having leftovers is better than not having enough and not being able to get more. I’m purposefully not posting pictures of the bag or saying what the pattern is just in case the person reads my blog.

Saturday, I took a couple hours after finishing cutting out the tote to make a pillow top. I wanted to test a 12″ squash blossom block using some hand dyed fabrics. The hand dyed fabrics I had were a test of a gradation of two colors which yielded golden yellow to mossy green to dark blue. They’re pretty but a definite departure from the rainbow gradation that I like so much which is based on lemon yellow, fuchsia, and turquoise. I thought they’d be great for this pattern though, more non traditional for a southwest inspired block. The center triangles are midnight blue and my points are off.

I used a white background for the block but in the end I didn’t like it as much as probably a cream, beige or even natural muslin. I’m going to pick a couple different background fabrics and audition them for the rest of the pillow covers and plan to use a couple different designs just to mix things up. What’s going to happen with these pillows? Well, I plan to get them made before the end of the year so they can go in my shop January 2nd. That’s my plan but I also have Christmas gifts to make and finish up so it might be cutting it close.

Happy Quilting!
Camille