Pillow Fight

I am participating in the second Brit Swap this year. The first was a swap of a mini quilt and now we are fighting over pillows. I love all the fantasticly crafted pillows that can be found all over flickr but have never made myself a pillow for my living room or any other room for that matter. The main reason is that I think that if I have patterned pillows all over the place in addition to quilts that my small cottage will quickly look to busy or sort of overrun with pattern. The consequence is that all my pillows are in solid colours (all bright silks from John Lewis).

Part of the appeal to join in the swap was to make a pillow and see how it would work in my living room. And the result is that I am now utterly in love with it and will make myself another one as this gorgeous number here will of course be sent to my swap partner in a couple of weeks (but until then it remain on my armchair.......eeeeee). I suppose patterned pillows within a reasonable number will work after all together with quilts !

What is also very appealing to me in a swap is the challenge to get it "right". The Brit Swap is very well organized as all participants have to produce a mosaic that showcases there inspiration for the swap in addition to filling in a form with likes and dislikes.

This weeks I spent some hours browsing through my partners flickr stream and then came up with a design that is scrappy yet structured. This arrangement here has some of my favourite prints that I worked with this year.

 

The design was generally well received by the Swap Ladies so after a little re-arranging of some of the crosses I went ahead and finished the pillow. I quilted each plus sign separately to emphasis the design.

 

I used a wonderful linen from my late grandmother's stash for the back and finished it with a hidden zipper in the middle. A lable is of course included that I blanket stitched on the botton part (name of recipient blacked out in the image of ).

 

 And here is the pillow in action. I so love it that I find it very hard to part with it but the upshot is that  I will receive a pillow in return as it is swap. The downside is that I now have to deal with being hooked on making pillows......Surely that can't be a bad thing (famous last words......)

Whilst I was on a roll last night I also made a little present for my Swap partner. I used the same design and fabric as on the pillow for the this cute needlebook. The sqares for the plus are only 1/2 square. That was challenging but enormous fun.

Let's hope she likes it.