Necessity is the Mother of Invention...

...or at least creative problem solving! I have a lot of sample FMQ projects laying around and I have been meaning to turn them into something "useful". Sometimes that is easier said than done. My April's SewCalGal FMQ challenge has been tripping around my sewing room since I completed it.

The problem is the size.

Just under 12" square

This would make quite a small pillow. So the question becomes how to add borders. Now it would be simple to add a single color border in a QAYG method, but no, I can't do simple!!! I wanted an inter 1/2" border.

I wanted a thin inner border of the brown and a wider border of the red. The finished pillow needs to be 18" square.

 So I decided to add the brown border right on top of the quilt sandwich. Although this would be a bit thick for a quilt, I figured it would be okay in a pillow top. Then I trimmed it to 3/4".

From this point on, it was easy to add borders in my normal QAYG method.  I cut 4" strips of the red and 5" strips of a grey (leftover fabric) for the backing. and sewed them on a side at a time.

 As I sewed on the fabric on each side, I then butted up batting and zigzag stitched to attach it. Then I just pressed the fabric over top of the batting.

Hmmmm, nice sides to quilt now! I wonder if "Lava Paisley" would look good on the sides? Or do you think some other FMQ motif would be better?

I'm linking up with Leah Day at The Free Motion Quilting Project for UFO Sunday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

P.S. Check out Quilty Embellishment Day (QED) for September for Gene Black's guest post on adding beads to quilts. Then link-up to share your quilty embellished projects and a chance to win this months giveaway!