Pillows for Classroom

I made these pillows as a gift for Teacher Appreciation Week at Southwest Charter School. Asher's classroom has a wooden bench that the kids like to lay on during read-aloud. These helped to make things a little more cozy.

I used a charm pack of Kate Spain's Central Park and some Kona solids. I used an echo quilting design. They were a big hit with the kids and Asher's teacher.

Close-up of echo quilting

The blue pillow

Here are the two pillows for Asher's class.

Short Story Quilt

The 49 squares for my next quilt are all made. I'm using two charm packs of Liz Scott's Sugar Pop! and Kona Cotton in Snow. The pattern for this quilt is called Short Story and it is from Carrie Nelson's Schnibbles Times Two: Quilts from 5" or 10" Squares. This is only my 2nd official quilt and the first one I did contained no solids. I liked the way it turned out, but it was very busy and there was nowhere to rest your eyes. So, using solids to offset my love of color is a new approach. I'll get more pictures up once I sew the squares together and start adding the sashing and border.

Trying Machine Quilting

Trying some machine quilting on my own after a class with Elizabeth Hartman a while back. Here I pieced together some of the many 1 1/2" squares I've cut from scraps and used some spearmint green Kona cotton between the patchwork strips.

I made four of these rectangles. They are an odd size. Then quilted them using my favorite design so far -- what I call the "mod square". Not sure what I'm going to do with them. Maybe a pillow or a table runner? I've moved on to some other things, but will revisit these soon.