So, there’s this cool quilt blog contest going on, it’s Project Quilting at Kim’s Crafty Apple. The gist is that every other week a new challenge is posted. You have one week to complete a project and post photos of the finished work. Judges and the general public then vote for their favorite.

I tried to enter for Challenge 1, but it took me three weeks to complete. So, obviously, I missed the deadline. I’m pleased with the finished pillow though and really enjoyed using the challenge constraints to kick-start some creative thinking.

The project requirements were to use 50 3″x5″ rectangles and a maximum of two 1/2-yard cuts of fabric to make the entire quilt.

The rectangles were all cut from stash scraps, two of 24 fabrics and two singles, and the quilt back 1/2-yard was some stash muslin. I bought the white background fabric at Walmart.

The pillow top pattern was inspired by the Joseph’s Coat Quilt Along at Don’t look now! Seriously, how amazing is that quilt? Even I know that I could never tackle a full-sized quilt right now, so I made a single block. Actually, I guess that’s two blocks with two extra connecting pieces,but all of the pieces are directly sewn to one 18″x18″ square of fabric. My rings are also smaller than those in the tutorial, I set my compass to a 4″ radius. When was the last time you used a compass?

Rather than sewing the applique by hand, I machine zigzagged 1/8″ from the edge, to allow for fraying. This technique was chosen out of fear. Fear that the points wouldn’t meet and fear that hand work would “take too long”. The rag edge definitely hides the mismatched points and gives a softer look to the finished top.

The front was quilted with the hand-quilting stitch on my sewing machine. Of course, I didn’t have my manual handy and totally guessed at settings. Used the wrong foot for most and struggled upping and upping the tensions and making a general mess of the back.  When I finally changed to a normal foot and reset the tension, the stitching was great. Finally found the manual, long after completing the pillow top and it turns out that I should have used transparent thread in the needle to make it really look hand quilting. Live and learn.

The back used the tiny scraps leftover from the oval pattern pieces and 1-1/2″x5″ strips. The strips were quilted in the ditch and the scraps were stitched down with random lines of quilting in normal straight stitch.

The seam line between the stripes and scraps was emphasized with a narrow machine stem stitch. I love the look and probably would have appliqued with it had I found it sooner.

The back is in two pieces, so the pillow form is removable. I suspect a white throw pillow will need a few washes… Um, please ignore the nasty, chipped polish.

Finally, the binding is double fold using most of the remaining rectangles, halved into 2-1/2″ squares and sewed into a long strip. I originally meant to round the corners of the pillow, but forgot about that idea until after I had already turned the first corner. No going back at that point. This was my first mitered binding and I even hand sewed the back, which is really surprising.

This is the first crafty thing I’ve finished in a while. Hopefully there will be more FOs appearing on the blog soon…