Arizona Pillows

For once in a very long while, I sewed something to keep!

I fell in love with April Rhodes Arizona fabrics for Art Gallery Fabrics when I first saw the previews a few months ago. I told my husband that that these would be the last fabrics that I purchased before our move. I promise. The last ones. No more. Just a fat quarter of each print and coordinating solids. Just.

They came in from Fat Quarter Shop and I fondled them as I do with any new fabric. Its a ritual. They made it through the move half way across the country along with all 700 lbs of my fabric. (People were all like, let me pick up this one rubbermaid full of fabric and take it to the moving truck, its probably light, like pillows. Wrong. You just broke everything in your body.)

Because of that, here are the obligatory moving pictures. Praise the Lord for these sweet people who helped us pack and unpack the Penske.

Back to the pillows: My sweet mom had given me several 24"x24" feather pillow inserts that she wasn't using, and I thought they would be perfect for what I wanted to do with the Arizona fabric. I've been obsessed with flying geese lately (inspired by this and this), so the first pillow was a no-brainer. I always use this tutorial for making my flying geese and they whip up pretty quickly! After some simple quilting on the top layer, I decided to go for the pocket backing (rather than a zipper), because my brain was not about to tackle a hidden zipper for the first time. You read that right, never done a hidden zipper. I believe in always leaving room to learn more...ahem.

I'm kind of obsessed with the way this one turned out. I love the colors and the flying geese are just as wonderful as I imagined them to be!

For the second pillow, I wasn't sold on what I wanted, so I went with a simple log cabin block. I knew that I wanted to use a bit of eachof the fabrics in my bundle (aside from the solid navy because it was just too dark), and this block allowed for that to happen.

Because my pillow needed to end up 24"x24" and my fabric only extended to 22" (fat quarters are 18"x22"), I decided to add a thick white border on all sides. This allowed for me to be a bit more creative than usual when it came to the quilting on this piece. I always say I need to step out of my quilting box a bit, so this is a small step in that direction. In my eyes, it needs some perfecting, but I'm still quite pleased with it!

They are the perfect bit of bright in our room. If the creative genius comes, I may even make a third!