Gramma's Super Secret Get Happy Present

In my first ever WIP post - still excited over it - I mentioned I had just started a pillow for my Gramma who has been a little under the weather. I have completed said pillow. This is my second pillow endeavor; the first was my NY Beauty Pillow. I have to say it wasn't much easier than the first. But don't let me get ahead of myself... let me walk you through the process!

First, trolling the interwebs led me to this super cool block - the snowflake block - and Sel at Mad Quilter's Disease (don't you love that blog name?!) made this tutorial so poor schmucks like me who need our hands held could make beautiful things too! I thought "this block would be perfect for a pillow!" Then I thought "I want to make Gramma a pillow!" My last thought (clearly not ever for all you smart asses) was "I am making this into a pillow for Gramma!"

Off to the fabric stash to find some fab fabs and this is what I came up with:

I am not sure where the navy with little flowers came from (prob Joann) but I absolutely love it so I went with that as my primary fabric. I found some coordinating fun fabrics from Connecting Threads - Love Strand in Olive and not sure about the pink dot - and got to cutting. The backing fabric (green paisley on navy) is also from Joann. You can also tell from my sewn together bits that I had some issues - the white space between patterns should be wider. Something very important about this pattern/tutorial: quarter inch seams are vital! and I would err on the side of a little wider piece than 3/4 inch strips the tutorial calls for. Also: pay attention to the proper placement of pieces; i.e. which side to sew on a strip and whether to cut when pressed open or not. You can see below there are some issues with lining up the snowflake bits and it doesn't look nearly as awesome as these ones in Sel's Flickr group.

Once you get the six wedges made they go together real quick to make this beautimus block! But you can see how teeny tiny it is due to my piecing issues. Trust me - my tomato is not about to take over the world - it is a normal sized tomato. 

As for the rest of this pillow endeavor, I had limited pink and I wanted it for the piping, so I kind of just improv'd the rest of the face of the pillow and did some real simple quilting. And below is what I ended up with:

I like how it came out. This isn't a color palette I would really ever have picked out - I love bright punchy colors but I think it works. I know Gramma will love it. And that is what is important. An aside: my hexagon was not equilateral - this is most likely due to piecing error. I noticed one wedge was much shorter than the others.

Piping is not my friend but I used the same tutorial over at Sew Mama Sew! and I only really had this one hiccup:

I won't show a picture of the back because I did not appropriately calculate the length needed for the other half of the envelope back so it is gaping a little. But you can see that pretty paisley fabric above :-)

For those of you who read all my rambling till the end instead of a little tl:dr action I give you the Happy Present Pillow - 

Hope all of you have had some fun so far this weekend. We submitted MO's application for residency today so life can go back to somewhat normal. Hopefully I can make some headway on Nubee's blocks and Sudoku face tomorrow when I get to CRAFTERNOON DELIGHT WITH M!

cheers cheeky monkeys!

-k