hemisphere pillows...

Though quilting hasn't even started, these pillows are ready to match the hemispheres quilt that I finished a few months ago. The plan is to use this quilt to freshen up the living room, and the pillows will be the finishing touch. It is always a struggle to figure out what to do with all of the leftover bits and bobs from a project - scraps, extra blocks, additional yardage. There is always a part of me that wants to keep all of these together, I'm not sure why, suppose it is 'just in case' I need to make something else to match. This is why I especially like to use as many of those extras up, and these pillows did just that.

My first crack at string blocks was last year in the Block Swap 2. The technique is super simple using a paper pieced method. I enjoyed playing around with machine quilting on these blocks. It's so neat how you get unintended patterns when you quilt - in my head I only saw the quarter square corners and not the overall cross pattern that appears.

Leftover circles made this pillow a snap to put together. This is my first attempt with a darning foot - I am not sure that it is perfection, but it really wasn't as scary as I thought! Practice will make perfect I'm sure. I actually made two of these, the other one is up in my etsy shop if you love it too ;)

The backing finishes off the remaining stash of my fave fabric from the hemisphere quilt. Sad to see it go, but glad I was able to use it in a larger piece. The piping [and other half of the backing] is a cotton linen that I had and happened to coordinate PERFECTLY! I have enough of this fabric to bind my quilt with - yay for using what I have!

I'm excited to see a little bit of blue appearing in the sky, though something about this weather and time change has given me the worst headache :( Perhaps some crafting and netflix will be the cure!