Silver Lining Rainbow Pillow

Thanks for voting for me if you did - I am so excited to say that I came third in the voting process! Thanks so much.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon two pillow contests whilst blog hopping.  One here at Stitched in Color and one here at Sew Mama Sew.  An idea began to form in my mind and then sat on the table until two days ago when we were stuck indoors whilst a tornado hit my small town and a cyclone swung by to say hi!!

My idea was born out of several things I had seen on the net.  A ticker tape dolls quilt, and this pillow and this pillow.  I wanted to try the technique and decided to combine it with my love of rainbows and the words to live by challenge from Sew Mama Sew.

I'm cutting it fine for the contests I thought I had til the end of the month! I loved making this quilted cushion cover and will come back and put a few instructions on.

[Edited to add instructions] Ok so to start with I sketched out my design on large drawing paper the same size as the pillow cover I was going to make.  I then used my light box to trace the shapes onto fusible webbing.  Attached these to the back of my scraps of fabric and the cloud shape to some white fabric, then painstakingly cut them out! The lightbox came in handy again when I wanted to make sure I placed them all in the right spots.  I just placed my fabric over the light box and stuck the pieces in the right places.

Once they were all in place I printed my 'words to live by' on printer paper and traced them with the aid of my light box onto the cloud fabric using my friends vanishing ink pen (Thanks Martine!).  I then hand stitched over that using embroidery thread.

Next came the 'quilting', I sewed the little pieces in place mainly with a matching colour thread, although one on each colour stream is stitched in silver.  And of course the cloud has a silver 'lining' (!) two rows of silver stitching around the edge. I just used a fairly think batting for this project.

The other thing I was pleased with was the binding.  I borrowed one of those gadgets that helps make binding from another friend (Thanks Lorriane!).  Well it was amazing! It made it so easy and no burnt fingers! I will definately be investing in one of those babies!  And the best thing about the binding was that one long strip from one edge of my fabric (think it was 74 inchs) did the whole cushion, which made it super easy!

Anyhow apparantly it passed the hugability test!

Thanks for stopping by.  I'm off to check out the other entrants at the Stitched in Color Pillow Party.  Not sure when the Sew Mama Sew ones will be showcased. Have a great day whatever you do.