PTS8 Sent

Cross one off the list! Just in the nick of time I completed the pillow for Round 8 of the Pillow Talk Swap. I'm sending it off to my secret partner this morning. One of the things I love about swaps is stretching my sewing skills. Often I get to step out of my comfort zone to try and create something I think my partner will love. I hope I was able to do that this time.

I knew I wanted to try creating the star in the middle right off the bat. I used this tutorial to learn the fabric folding technique. But I also wanted to take the pillow to the next level, so after creating the star I started improvising the piecing around it. During the planning phase I had pulled this stack of fabric:

Then I started to edit when I made the star, but a few people in the swap chimed in and mentioned that they missed the lime green fabrics from my initial stack so I decided to add some back in. Then I brought some purple back into the last round, but as I mentioned the other day, something wasn't sitting right with me. So I put the pillow aside for several days to think about it.

A couple of you confirmed what I was thinking. And, thank you to everyone who chimed in. I really, truly appreciated the feedback! So I ended up ripping some seams, and pulling the purple border off the pillow entirely. Then I replaced it with a solid lime green border. Suddenly it was feeling much better to me.

I finished it off with hand stitching in lime green and purple. But please don't judge my hand stitching. This one was tough! There are several layers of fabric that I needed to sew through because of the folded, fabric star, so the back of the front (weird I know, but I think you know what I mean) of the pillow isn't so pretty and the hand stitching was slow going, taking one stitch at a time to get the needle through all those layers. The back is simple and I brought the purple back into the pillow here and a hidden zipper enclosure. I really love the way a zipper back makes the whole pillow taut. The finished pillow measures 14" square.

Of course, I included some extras in the package - some purple Pearle cotton thread, a spool of purple variegated Gutterman 100% cotton thread, some fabric scraps, buttons (yes, those tiny scissors and sewing machine are actually buttons!) and a pair of my absolute favorite scissors. I was gifted a pair of these puppies in a swap by my dear friend Natalie and they're amazing.

I really hope that my partner loves her package. The pressure is on for me because I'm actually an admirer of my partner. It was an honor to make this for her. I'll be holding my breath until it arrives at her house!