Friday, 31 January 2014

Sour Candy Cushion

I made this cushion for round 8 of the X-Factor Pillow Swap. The premise of this swap is that each round, you make a cushion based around a theme, and send a photo to the group admin, who posts it to the group (so you don't know who made which cushion). After the deadline for entries has passed, everyone ranks the entries in order of preference, and the person whose cushion got the most votes gets their first choice, the person whose cushion got the second most votes gets their first choice (if it's still available), and so on.

The theme for this round was log cabins and text. After the last round, which was low volume, I wanted to do something really different, despite the temptation to use a low volume text fabric.

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For my cushion, I used the black text print from Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures lines with a handful of prints from Alison Glass's Lucky Penny collection. I really like how the colours of the Lucky Penny fabrics are slightly clashy and how they really pop against the black text print. The design is super simple - instead of making a log cabin in the traditional way, I simply made four quarter log cabins, by starting with a central square and then only adding "logs" to two of the sides. Since these blocks weren't too big, I simply pieced them, but if you wanted greater accuracy, foundation paper piecing would work brilliantly (but more slowly).

For the quilting, I did simple straight line cross hatch grid - it gives lovely texture to the cushion without distracting from the piecing. I used Aurifil 50 weight thread in colour #1246 - a very dark charcol grey, and as usual, I was delighted with how it just blended into the top. I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but sometimes I find very dark black or grey threads to have a different texture to lighter threads, and sometimes they seem to tangle more easily. Not so in this case, which made hand stitching the binding down with the same Aurifil thread a dream.

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The back of the cushion is made using a drill fabric from Spotlight, designed by Austrlian designers Prints Charming. It's such a fun print - I wish I made more of it! Of course, I used my covered zipper cushion back
method - it really is speedy and nice and neat. I posted my cushion off to my partner this afternoon - I hope she likes it!

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18 comments:

Sheryl said...

Love it! The fabric selection is brilliant and really complements the design. Someone's going to be very lucky in the swap.

Debbie said...

What a fantastic mix of fabrics!

joworimakes said...

love this! and love the premise of this swap - must be fun!

Kirsten said...

This is such a funky pillow - love the bright fabrics with the black text!

JB said...

Fab! The name is perfect.

Dominique said...

Such an unexpected rendition of the theme! Brilliant!

Jill said...

Love this! Love the fabric . . . especially the black and white print you chose for the back piece. I'm going to be making some pillows soon (for our new sofa) so I will be referring back to this post. Thanks!

Spontaneous Threads said...

I loved this pillow in the group pool. Fun to read what you were thinking when you put it together!

Anna said...

I love the way this turned out! Totally appropriate name, too :)

Leanne said...

I love it, I really need to make time for the next round of this swap.

Rachel said...

I really love your pillow!

Julie said...

Your partner will love this. Another beautiful creation Adrianne.

Erica said...

Love it, so fun!

Gemini Jen NZ said...

Really gorgeous pillow and I love that Prints Charming fabric too! Great work!

Roslyn said...

Brilliant fabric choices, totally gorgeous!

Leonie said...

Looks awesome! the backing is so much fun, so much!

Cille said...

What a great pillow - front and back both. The receiver is very, very lucky.

Christiane said...

So cute! I like black and white mixed with coloured fabric. Thanks for sharing!