04 Jan Are the holidays over?

I know most of you (and me) are ready to leave the holidays behind us and move on to 2011.  As usual, I’m a little behind.  I finished the third pillow in my holiday pillow series and have to let you see it before I put this project aside and move on.

For the quilting on this one, I sort of echoed the trees in the top part of the pillow.  I drew a few basic echoing (is this a word?) lines and then filled in quilting about every half inch from the original lines.  Below the trees, on the ground, I did horizontal lines about every half inch.   This pillow is more densely quilted than the other two, but I like the variety.  You can see the quilting better in the bottom photo.

I used the same fabric for all the trees in this pillow – I actually cut them out as two individual shapes.  In order to give the individual trees a little more definition, I used a silver rayon thread to applique them and continued the satin stitching between the trees.  I don’t often use rayon thread, but this came out quite nicely.  The only disadvantage was in trying to bury the threads on the back.  I use a self-threading needle to bury my ends, which works well with a cotton thread, but the rayon thread broke going into the needle more often than not.

Here is a last shot of the three pillows together and I promise I am on to other things 🙂