Post-Christmas Show and Tell

So, the big day has come and gone and secret projects are no longer secret. Here's the pillow I made for my Mom, to go with the Cathedral Windows one from a year or so ago:

Recognize it? These are the sample One Block Wonder hexagons I made earlier this year, after seeing what Shelley was up to. They lingered on my design wall for months before I decided to go ahead and do a pillow front and back with them. I filled in the outer bits with blue solid.

All those bias edges looked like a hot mess by the time I was done piecing...

but a brutal pressing worked wonders. I quilted each side with some poly batting that was lying around, with cotton lawn for "backing" to reduce weight.

This was my first-ever free motion quilting, and I had a blast zipping around more or less highlighting various shapes in the hexagons. Objectively, I did a really a horrible quilting job: sloppy and imprecise with wildly varying stitch lengths and all kinds of "ooops, didn't mean to do that" moments. Fortunately, Mom is as forgiving of my adult efforts as she was with kindergarten art projects, and I had no illusions going in that I would be capable of anything other than an exuberant slapdash job, so we're both happy with it.

The  piping, alas, did not turn out well. I do think it makes a nice defining line between front and back, but it's why the edge is so ripply. I've decided to think it looks sort of flower-shaped, and to not worry about it.

My sister got a couple of the prettiest coffee mugs (she's happened to mention needing new ones) with matching coasters I made following this tutorial:

My first one was a bit of a dud, due to user unfamiliarity with my new 1/4" foot and how it would behave, but the rest were easy-peasy. Next time I might get really lazy and machine stitch the binding.

Here's the set of six. As you can see they are a mix-n-match set from prints that play well together:

The "back" wraps around to the "front" (or could be the other way around) to make the binding, which is a nice touch when using two different fabrics for each.

Mr. de Hilo's lap quilt is done and has been put to use. I haven't figured out yet where in (or outside) this house to set up for a quilt pic, but hope to get one soon. My lap quilt is almost done. There's a bit more quilting still to do on it, and then binding. My goal is to get it done before NYear, and I might even beat that by a few days if all goes well.

BTW: Santa outdid herself this year in the gift fabric department! I'll show off some of those new goodies in a next post.