Finished Pillows

 The two pillows I've been working on are finished. I love the way they turned out.

The living room really needed something to brighten it up. I like how the off white color of the background looks against the medium beige of the couch.

I learned a lot making them. I moved out of the Advanced Beginner stage of free motion quilting into an early Intermediate stage. I now have control over where the next stitch is going to be, and even some control over the size of the stitches. At least I now know what the sewing machine is supposed to sound like when I'm moving at the right speed.

Making these pillows was an interesting experience. Once again I was doing something I'd only read about. And I found that actually doing something brings up questions that I thought I already had the answer to. Like how does one actually construct a pillow back.

This is what the second pillow top looked like right after I finished the quilting, but before I cut it down to the correct pillow size. The feathers came out very well, and I enjoyed the background quilting. All in all I think it looks pretty good.

This is a detail. A bit of the top of the feather and some of the background shells .

One thing I learned is the reason a lot of machine quilters use thinner thread. The thread builds up when you do this kind of background pattern. I'm going to need to buy some off white and white thread in a thinner size.

I also ran out of thread in the bobbin more than once while doing this pillow. And that was frustrating.

I tried the pillows out on this chair too. But when I sit in this chair I don't want a pillow behind my back.

There is a third finished pillow top. I'm thinking about getting a pillow form for that one just to have some color in this chair. I don't have to actually use it.

Take care all.