Aqua Red Pillow

 I finally got a chance to make a pillow for our couch. I wanted to brighten up our familyroom a bit so I used an aqua red color combo from my stash. This is one of my favorite color combos. As usual, I am still playing with free-motion quilting. I am learning a lot from trial and error and it's been sew much fun.

The sailboat block tutorial was from SewCanShe. Caroline has a monthly classic block tutorial that she puts up and we can turn the block into any type of project we would like. In my case, I made a pillow. The sailboat block is 12". I added a 2" red plaid border to turn mine into a 16" size for my pillowcase. 

I decided to take a bit of a shortcut when it came to quilting the front of the pillow. I placed the pillow top onto the batting and started to quilt. It didn't work out very well. The stitches weren't coming out. I had tension problems and had to rip out the stitches a couple of times. I then got tired of ripping stitches and placed a solid white backing under the batting. That solved all of my problems. Next time, no more shortcuts.

Here's a close-up of the quilting. I did some stippling around the border. In the white spaces I did clamshells, in the floral print I did flowers and the water part were waves going every which way.

This is the back lining. It would have been nice if it I could see it from the back, but it's a pillow lining so this is not going to be seen :-(  I used the same blue for the back of the pillow.

I made a zipper closure in the back that way it will be easy to take off and throw in the wash. I finished the inside raw edges so there won't be any fraying. Now this bright and happy pillow is sitting on our brown couch. This pillow was so quick and fun to make that I think I am going to be addicted to pillow-making. I do have to make one or two more pillows for our couch though.