pillow making – Teresa Coates

Curved piecing has been a bit of an obsession for me lately. Blame it on finding a little template for little Drunkard’s Path blocks while I was at Sew Expo. I also just happened to have a charm pack of Gardenvale from Moda at last Quilt Market. I figured they should meet.

I sewed all the pieces together, in totally random fashion, as leaders and enders, so it hardly felt like I’d done any actual sewing at all. Then all the sudden the blocks were all sewn together. I gave them all a quick press and squared them up a tad smaller than the template (a scant 3-7/8″), then arranged and re-arranged some more until I got something I was okay with.

We just got the collection in at the shop, which was the perfect impetus to actually finish it up (so we could use it as a display). I did a little unevenly spaced straight line quilting on the front.

Then made a super simple envelope pillow back and voila a new pillow for the sofa! I love it even more than I thought I would.

I tend to stay within the neutral palette for quilts, home decor and clothing, rarely feel confident enough to start prints. I love the scrappy look, but dear god, it scares me to death to mix fabrics (I know, it’s weird). That’s what makes Gardenvale a favorite for me. It doesn’t look like a collection. It’s crazy mixed-up colors and prints and scale and I would never in a million years feel like I could mix three different circles with two different florals and stripes. But Jen Kingwell did and it’s gorgeous.

If you’re familiar with her patterns, you know this is totally her style and I find it entrancing (though, the quilts can slightly overwhelm me if I stare too long). There’s a skill to this mixing and matching that I will never have. And that’s okay, she’s doing it for me now.

Check out #gardenvale and #gardenvalefabric on IG for lots of other projects that people are making, especially the PJ pants by @tinkerfrog. They might just be the favorite. Next to my pillow, of course.

I’ve been slowly adding to my collection of pillows on PDX Pillows at Etsy, a project I’ve wanted to take on for a long time. It started when I was in SoCal and missing Portland. Now that I’m back I’m so grateful for all the things that make Portland and the Pacific Northwest my home, I want to share it all.

I started with the PDX Pillow, an idea that just popped into my head one day when I was working on another reverse appliqué project. I love it! The plaid, the denim, the PDX cut out– it makes me happy.

So the brain has been ticking away coming up with more ideas on pillows that could be made, so when my friend Jen at BettyCrockerAss offered up these castoffs from Columbia Sportswear I was all over it. There had to be something I could do with them. Repurposing a local company’s product seems like a perfect fit. But what to do?

I’ve been intrigued by all that is possible with HST (half square triangles) lately and decided I’d give that a shot. So I cut up 100 2.5″ squares of the plaids and started sewing them together somewhat randomly.

After sewing the squares, I cut them into triangles and arranged then rearranged until I came up with this diamond that I liked well enough. Add a little quilting, a backing and an invisible zipper and -bam!- another pillow cover to add to the shop. The longer it sits here, the more I think I need to make another. Maybe mixing up fabrics a bit more next time. Or integrating some of the vintage linens I was recently gifted. I’m not sure which I’ll try out next. Let me know what you think–could I mix the plaids with linens? Stick with one or the other? How about Pendleton wool? I think I’d like to try that, too!

The Mighty Columbia Pillow Cover, as well as a half dozen other styles, is available now on Etsy.

Tag: pillow making

Running in Circles with Gardenvale

Making the Mighty Columbia