It's That Time of Year

Back to School - oh, how I long for the simple days of backpacks, composition books, pencil sharpeners, and the elusive "first day of school" outfit. My daughters are entering their junior and sophomore years of college - and this year it's all about outfitting apartments - arrgghh! We've spent the summer hunting and gathering - a couch here, a sofa there, chairs and tables requiring assembly, rescued microwaves and the neighbors excess kitchen supplies - - it's all being stored in my garage - instead of my car!!!

I thought I needed to add my touch to the stash of apartment fixin's - and pillows were the perfect accoutrement. My daughter picked out beautiful fabric from Kaffe Fassett, some quilting weight and some home dec. Here is my array of pillows - 8 in all.

This is a home dec weight fabric - really graphic - and sorry, I don't have the name of it - it might not be Kaffe Fassett as I can't find it at his web site.
Here are two pillows in the Kaffe Fassett Radiation pattern, quilting weight.
Two more from a fabric called Line Dance, a quilting weight fabric. Another home dec weight farbic called August Rose.
I backed all of the fabric for the tops of the pillows with batting and added some quilting designs. I had a lot of fun with this - playing with both the quilting design and the thread color. Here's a simple grid pattern.
This fabric only needed the simple addition of some straight line quilting - I used an elongated stitch to show off the color of the thread.

Again, simple grid quilting on very busy fabric, but I really think it adds to the overall appearance.
Another grid variation.
And for this quilting pattern I played with my Bernina Circular Embroidery attachment.
I basically used it like a spirograph - in tomorrow's post I will give a full tutorial on this application of this attachment - too cool!
I made all of the pillow covers removable so that should something spill on them - say a soda or iced tea of water, or beer - they could be laundered. Here is the hidden zipper.
I had a lot of fun with the outside of the pillow, adding flanges and ruffles galore.
Many thanks to my Bernina ruffler - what a great attachment - making an easy task of gathering the fabric. Admittedly, it has a very mid-evil appearance - it looks as if it might rip your fingers right off your hand - but really its a fantastic foot to have in your foot arsenal.
Tomorrow I'll show you how to use the circular attachment as a spirograph quilting tool - FUN!