Patio Pillows

 Okay, so it's not a Design Wall Monday post but I can't resist celebrating the completion of my patio pillows. Just FYI, the design wall looks the same as it did last time, with snake blocks on the wall. 

The patio pillow project (say that three times fast!) started out as something for practicing free motion quilting, and it certainly was effective in doing that. I feel much more confident in tackling FMQ now. I'm certainly not very skilled, that will take lots of practice, but I'm no longer paralyzed by "I can't" anymore, either. 

I like the pops of color the pillows add to our patio. Our patio is covered and it faces northeast which is excellent in this climate. We get a lot of sun early in the morning but not in the afternoon. The batik fabrics will fade from the bright sun, so we'll have to bring them into the house when we're not using them. I have a basket for them in a corner near the patio door. 

Each of the four panels is different. The first is wavy lines, quilted with the walking foot. No FMQ practice here because I wanted to try out this wavy line concept. 

The second was simple leaves along a meander. I can FMQ a pretty good meander, and a friend loaned me a book about how to add motifs to a meander to expand your repertoire. After some practice on a muslin sandwich I quilted this. 

The third panel was spirals.

And the fourth one is leafy vines. This one is my favorite, but it took a lot more planning of the placement of the leaf clusters.  This would be hard to do allover on a larger quilt and get the placement okay. 

The last step was trimming them to size, adding zippers, and sewing them into pillowcases. Ta-done!

Just in time for temperate weather, and we can use them all winter because it's very pleasant to enjoy the sun in the wintertime here. 

Link ups: Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Love Laugh Quilt