Wednesday Sewing - Designing Pillows Part 2

Last week, I began designing a southwest themed pillow.  This week, I'm starting to put it together!  By the time I'm done, I'll have two different pillows - I'm calling the pillow I'm working on this week pillow A.

Materials:
*3/4 yard background material - includes material for pillow B
*fat quarters or fabric scraps
*Steam-A-Seam 2
*18 inch square pillow form
*patterns found here

 So when I finished with last week's blog post, I was on my way to the fabric store to buy a few colors I needed but amazingly did not have.  While I was there, I found a lighter blue I decided would be better for the background.  I like to use solid, but not quite solid colors for backgrounds - this one has a lighter shade splotched through it.

1.  Print out the patterns and cut them out.  Turn them over and trace each shape onto Steam-A-Seam 2.  Separate the pieces.

2.  Iron each piece onto the back of its fabric.  Cut each piece out.

3.  Cut a 19 x 19 inch piece of background fabric.  Peel the paper off each piece and begin arranging on your background.  Further down, I have a guide for where to put the mountain and rock pieces.

4.  When I finished sticking the pieces in their places, this is what I had:

5.  I purposely didn't put any ground or background in, thinking that I wanted it to look a little "floaty."  I was wrong!  I didn't like that big, empty space, so I added in the suggestion of mountains.

6.  Much better!  Iron the applique pieces onto the fabric and finish the edges.  I used blanket stitch embroidery on my edges to give it a folk art look, but if that's not your thing you could use your machine and a short, tight zigzag stitch like I did in this project.

I also added stripes on the body of the cactus, using an outline stitch.

And here's the guide for placing the mountain and rock pieces:

Next week, I'll show you what I did with my second design, and the week after that we'll put them together into pillows.

Happy Creating!  Deborah