Upcycled Sailboat Pillows

I first want to send love and thoughts to all those left in the wake of Hurricane Laura. The Gulf Coast is where I’m from and all my family and childhood friends are still there so I watch the storms with a heavy heart wherever they go once they hit the Gulf. I’m always leery about donating to national organizations, because I’m not sure where the money is really going. I found this article with some local organizations that are already working to clean up the aftermath and help those in the path.  Hopefully, there will be a group that stands out for you if you are looking for a way to help from a distance.

With all that said, my happy place is an old beach cabin on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. I love sewing on the porch when I go to visit. And sometimes I sew things for the house before I get there. Like these sailboat pillows.

A few years ago, I found these sheets at Goodwill and I couldn’t walk away from them! They were sailboat sheets from Pottery Barn Kids and I just knew they would be a perfect fit for something at the beach house. We’re always doing little upgrades here and there and the ‘middle’ room as it’s called had just received a new grey paint job and needed fresh curtains. (There’s the end room, the middle room and the blue room, even when it hasn’t been painted blue, it’s still the blue room!) I backed the curtains with yellow lining and extended that just about a half inch for a little yellow accent.

And of course, the fabric hoarder that I am, I just couldn’t through away the scraps from the curtains. But what to do with those scraps???

Make pillows of course!

The yellow is one of my staples, so I still had some of that and ‘outlined’ each boat with it.

Like the seahorse pillow, these were made before my invisible zipper phase started! I didn’t even have enough scraps left to make the back sailboat fabric. I used almost every inch of that upcycled sheet set!

I didn’t get to visit the beach house this year due to COVID and my son asked me this weekend if there had ever been a year that we hadn’t been. And no, I don’t think in all my 20 years (ha! it’s been a few more than that) on this planet, I have never spent a whole year away from the beach house. Definitely not a year missed since the kiddo’s been around and I can’t remember another year that I’ve missed it. Let’s keep wearing our masks so we can get back to our well loved traditions whatever they may be!

Seahorse Pillow- a cross stitch project

I hate that summer is coming to an end and I feel like I haven’t done much… My husband keeps reminding me about the pandemic… But today we just found out that the kiddo got two extra days before school starts!

With that, I have a series of beachy pillows I want to share to make me feel like I’m at the beach instead of ‘Staying Home and Staying Safe!’

I’m really in love with how this cross stitch pillow turned out! My niece is in love with seahorses. You might even remember the seahorse stuffie I made her from her very own design…  Well, when I got the Summer 2017 issue of Crossstitcher Magazine and there was a seahorse alphabet in there, I knew I had to make it for her!

I have to say I loved working on this on my trip to the beach last year, but I was sad I wasn’t able to put it lall together before I left the beach. Ha. but sometimes swimming in the Gulf is more important that sewing… sometimes… Ha!

Typically when I pick cross stitch projects, I’m not a fan of the outlining.  I almost left this one without the outlines, but I’m so glad I switched gears and actually followed the directions! I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have been as cool. I really love this alphabet.

Although, I’m just posting this, it is an older project. One I made before my obsession with invisible zippers.

And how about that seahorse and octopus fabric??? A perfect match. I’ve been hoarding this fabric and it was perfect for this project!

The Daily Improv

I’ve said it other years, but this is my year of cleaning out my WIPS! I’m doing a good job of it, now to get them photographed and blogged about!

This is my first quilt I finished this year! It’s not one of my oldest WIPs, but it was sitting there just waiting! All the blocks were done, they just weren’t put together…

Amy Ellis of Amy’s Creative Side had a one week Improv Challenge last year.  The intent was to get you started in improv. I love improv and am not new to it, but I couldn’t resist her one week challenge. Who knew it would actually over a year for it to all come together though… (well, I should have known based on my track record!)

Each day you get a prompt and make one block from that prompt.

And actually, it looks like anyone can still do it any time. Just sign up here!  Each day sends you a new prompt and it’s a great way to try something new or different with out the commitment of a long term sew along!

I really love how it turned out!

I think the first day was stripes. In this picture you can see my stripes block and one of the triangle blocks to the right. The top one was the paper pieced improv block challenge. I still struggle with the idea of paper piecing and improv in the same sentence. To me they don’t go together! Other people would totally disagree with me and that’s ok! So I made a couple of paper piecing patterns and went with it. We’re trying new things, right?

This is my favorite one! The Log Cabin block! I love improv log cabin blocks. love love love! I actually made two of these!

And curves. Another of the prompts was curves. I think I ended up with two curve blocks, too. There’s even more curves bceuase as I was squaring up the blocks, I would use those cut off pieces in other blocks areas to make the blocks ‘fit’ with each other. I love the little bits of curves here and there.

And then the back was a big improv block in itself! As I mentioned before, I used a lot of my ‘cut off’ pieces to piece the front. I also incorporated smaller scraps to fill in the background space. I had a few smaller pieces left over for the back, but I mostly used the bigger scraps. When I was done with the back, I had just enough of this fabric pull left for the binding!

I’m usually a straight line, one pattern all over kind of quilter. Trying new things with piecing doesn’t scare me. trying new thing with quilting does! In this one, I tried to change the quilting in different areas to reflect the improv shapes of the blocks. You can see it here on the back pretty well.

What do you think? Are you up to the challenge? Give it a try!

The Daily Improv

41×44

Design by me, with prompts from Amy’s Creative Side

Quilted my me

Completed in  March 2020