Try turning this simple 'snowball' block into a sweet Christmas bauble pillow project
Welcome to my stop on the Mini Masterpieces book hop, published by Lucky Spool! (Read to the end for a great giveaway!)
I was delighted to be invited to join the celebration of this book release, by my IRL Aussie friend Alyce Blyth.
This has been a dream of hers for a long time now, and I'm over the moon to be helping her promote it, along with a very talented group of quilters.
A look inside will reveal the book is divided into incremental 'lessons', each one teaching a new quilting technique that adds to your skill level and builds on the last lesson.
By the end you'll have a comprehensive knowledge of fundamental quilting skills that will aid you in your quilting journey, as well as a range of larger projects to make from your basic blocks!
It's cleverly laid out and beautifully illustrated.
My stop on the tour is the 'Snowballs' lesson, which teaches you how to add corner triangles to your square blocks.
I immediately interpreted this block as Christmas baubles, and got to work making this fun block with a holiday theme!
Such a simple block can have such a lot going on as you can see.
The pink and orange and gold twinkles from Ruby Star Society's Social and Spark line were the perfect choice to fussy cut here.
I decided to sew my blocks into a Christmas themed cushion but mostly
in my mind's eye, I was picturing the quilting that I wanted to add.
It's always my favourite part.
It's amazing how much drama some rows of thread can add to a simple block layout, and I got to use lots of those colourful threads that I seem to have laying around from my dressmaking days.
O I love me a good matchstick quilting design!
I started out this pattern by marking lines every inch with my hera marker, then filling in between with more rows of stitching, about 1/8" apart.
I kept switching out thread colours every few rows, so that there was a good mix of colours.
I've used emerald green, lime green, olive green, dark pink, light pink, dark orange, light orange and white.
Phew! That was a lot of rows...
but a good podcast and a favourite playlist makes the time passes quickly!
To the finished cushion I added some pompom trim, and some narrow ribbons for the top of the 'baubles'.
I hope you can see the effect...I thought it looked quite cartoonish and quirky in the end, and was a big hit with the kids.
Another 20" squishy pillow, with my favourite down insert from Ikea.
One final touch I love to add is an exposed zipper, and make a feature of this rather than hide it.
Why not really show it off...this is a two tone zipper with a gold pull to echo the sparkles on the fabric.
You can make your own zipper this way by joining two zipper-by-the-metre lengths, and it's a really unique look.
If you've never seen or tried these zips, they add that next level to your projects!
So I hope you're inspired to grab a copy of this book and make a mini masterpiece of your own!
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