Third Christmas Reveal: The Dog Pillows

In our household, there is no doubt who is the mistress in control...Miss Kasey, our beautiful, almost 13 year old Bernese Mountain Dog.

While on a weekend birthday get-away for my husband (that turned into a Maine quilt shop hop...another story for another post) with Kasey, of course, we found some very special fabric.   The result are my first pillows...one for each of My Men.   The first is a simple log cabin pillow to accompany the quilt above:

With the smaller project size, I decided to practice new FMQ'ing techniques on these pillows.  Some worked out better than others.  The Angela Walters book provided inspiration and easy to follow instructions.   The next is the Checkers block by Monika Wintermantel that was included in this book.

Ok, so, I might have gone a little too dense on the quilting on this one...four different styles on one little pillow!  But what fun!  I also struggled with the thread color selection for the main block on all these pillows....dark dog, light background.

The next pattern is Stepping Stones by Tacha Bruecher.

I went back to stippling for this one as I did not want to distract from the pattern.  And the fourth pillow may be my favorite, a wonky, scrappy log cabin:

More playing with FMQ'ing!  And here they all are together:

One exciting aspect of this project was that other than the dog fabric, all the other fabrics came from my stash!  Yeah!  I feel like being able to say those words somehow moves me into a "legit quilter" category of some kind!  I had lots of practice with invisible zippers and calculating the finish pillow sizes.

The pillows are not remotely as beautiful as the real thing, but were much appreciated by the men I love on Christmas.

PS  We are thankful everyday for the joy that this special old puppy has given to us.  I know you dog, cat, iguana, bird....animal lovers out there know just what I am talking about!