"Fun" Pillow!

We took a car trip to Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend, and I wanted a hand-sewing project to work on in the car.  What to do? While I enjoy hand work, I just don't do it that often - so I had to dream up a "fun" (you'll get the meaning later) project.

I ended up with this charming pillow, inspired by two wonderful bloggers.  

This fabulous quilt, Spring Shoots, is by the creative and talented quilter, Lou Ann at Nifty Quilts.  If you have never visited her blog, you really should!  Her quilts boost scrap quilts to an art form.  And this quilt has been up on my inspiration board for a while!

Then this lovely bounty of scraps landed in my lap from another quiltland blogger, Barb of Fun with Barb (hence the "fun" reference).  Hers is another great blog, not to be missed! Barb has excellent workmanship as well as design, creating some knockout handcrafted beauties. 

I won the fabrics from a feature on her blog, and after spreading them out to admire them, I started wondering what I would use them for...until I got the idea to make a pillow, inspired by Lee Ann's quilt!

I brought along a picture of the quilt to inspire me, plus some hand drawn leaf patterns to use for patterns, and went to town creating leaf after lovely leaf.  I cut out the leaf patterns from paper, and then wrapped the fabric over the edges and hand sewed to secure. 

This was a perfect passenger seat, or hotel room at night, project.  I even had the idea I would continue the hand work and actually hand-applique the leaves onto the background after we got back home.

Then the reality of my busy life, and other quilting projects in the queue, suggested that I use machine applique.  And voila! I guess I should call it a fun & nifty pillow!