April Craftbook Challenge: Zigzag Quilted Cushions

This week I have been busy making some chair cushions for my mom's wicker rocking chair. I think they came out really nicely and I wanted to share them with you. While I was visiting her I used 2 big pieces of newspaper to make my templates, and traced the shape of the chair back and seat onto them. I also marked on the newsprint where I wanted the ties to go, 2 at the top for the chair back, and all 4 corners on the chair seat cushion. Then I took my newspaper home and started looking for a great pattern.
 
I wanted my chair cushions to coordinate with quilt I had made my mom before, so I dug out all my leftover scraps of Midwest Modern from that project, and added a few coordinating prints and some neutral solids to fill in the gaps. Her quilt was very geometric and modern so I was looking for something similar.

I decided to adapt the pattern for the ZigZag pillow from Malka Dubraswky's Fresh Quilting. If you haven't seen this book yet, it is filled with all sorts of great projects and I would really recommend it to anyone interested in trying quilting and looking for some modern, colourful inspiration. I was also really inspired by the neutrals in this baby quilt by Red Pepper Quilts, based on the same pattern.

This pattern is really fun to put together. The blocks are all perfect squares, made up of one print and one solid rectangle, and the pattern emerges when you alternate the direction of each block. I really like Malka's suggestion of using close parallel lines of quilting to accentuate the zigzag pattern, so that's what I went with. I made each quilt top a little bigger than my templates and them trimmed them down to size. I used all the extra rectangles that I had cut up to make pieced ties.

The seat back is just a mini quilt, bound with grey linen and backed with natural linen/cotton blend. The seat cushion was quilted, and then sewn to a two piece back with a lapped zipper. I made my own cording with the same grey linen cut on the bias. The cushion itself is 1 inch thick foam. They don't really fit on my little antique chair, but they will look perfect on the wicker rocker.

Here is a peek at the quilt that I made my mom last year:

The pattern for the quilt top is Mixed Tape from Elizabeth Hartman of Oh Fransson! I used a big stack of Amy Butler Midwest Modern that I had been hoarding, along with lots of natural linen for the sashing. The backing was my own improvised design; I used all the extra rectangles from making the pattern blocks and pieced them into a huge square. This was my very first try at free motion quilting, and I chose to use a stippling pattern which turned out pretty well. Elizabeth has a whole series of tutorials on quilt-making basics which I found really helpful.

I think that the Mixed Tape Quilt and the ZigZag Pillow may be two of my favourite quilting patterns. I love their simplicity, mix of solids and pattern, and how they show off your fabulous prints. Do you have a favourite modern quilt pattern? I would love to hear about it and why you loved it.

Year of the Rabbit Sewing Kit

 

Have you heard 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit? That sounds good to me; rabbits have always been associated with luck, so I hope this will be a lucky year. Rabbits are also symbols of the coming spring, and I am pretty sick of blah winter rains and no sunshine.

I wanted to make a little "extra present" for my sister, who just had a birthday, but has been studying hard and deserves a little extra something just for being herself. As she and I both have a fondness for cute little woodland animals, I decided to make her gift rabbit-themed, to go with the new year, and lucky, sunny wishes. I made her a cute little sewing kit, including a needle book, a white rabbit measuring tape, and a little needle felted rabbit teacup pincushion. 

 

The tail of the white rabbit measuring tape is a ball of needle felted cream wool, which also serves as the pull tab for the measuring tape. I used a tiny shell button in the center of the rabbit to trigger the mechanism for retracting the tape. I decided to keep the design simple and not include any details in the rabbit except for a green eye. The rabbit body was made in much the same way as my owl tape measure.

The needle book is 6" square, with one center page. I fused Timtex between the layers of fabric and felt to make the books cover very rigid (more "book-like" than most fabric books). On the inside, I used little panels of felt to separate each type of needle. There are also some pockets for holding sewing machine needles, a needle threader, and a pair of Japanese thread snips. I found a little piece of vintage velvet ribbon use as the tie. For the heavy needles, I sewed down two rows of a Japanese crochet cotton lace I purchased from Daiso in Vancouver; the larger needles can thread easily through the holes in the lace.

Here is the inside of the needle book: 

The pin cushion was the most fun of the three little projects to make. I really love needle felting. It feels like magic crafting. Before I tried it, I didn't know what all the fuss was about, but now it is my favourite thing to do late at night. My rabbit is made of grey and white felt wool, his eyes are black seed beads and his nose is a few stitches with pink embroidery thread.  I really like the expression on the little grey bunny. He looks like he was disturbed from his lunch of felt buttercups by a nosey crafter, and he is just waiting for me to look away so he can go about his business.

There are a lot of other teacup pincushions out there. The first time I saw the beautiful little worlds in a teacup made by Mimi Kirchner, I knew I wanted to try to make one. My teacup is like a very simple version of the beautiful scenes she creates.

Happy Chinese New Year!