Amy Butler Quilt and Pillows

I finished Amy Butler's Cameo Quilt some time ago.  It's a quick and easy quilt to make, though expensive.  I ordered my fabric from Fabric.com, when they had a good sale on.  Of course, some of my savings was clawed back by the duty and VAT that I had to pay upon delivery.  Those charges weren't so high, but the postal service or UPS, or whomever always adds about a £10 charge for handling this customs charge.  Even so, I saved a lot of money over buying all this designer quilting cotton locally.

Amy Butler Cameo Ornament Quilt

The pattern is free, and it quilts up quickly.  Especially if you speed piece the background squares.  The ornaments take up a lot of fabric and create a lot of waste fabric.  Mine went to the local pre-school.  They can now stick and glue pretty fabric to their little hearts' content!

It tried to quilt down the centre of the ornaments.  Technically, it worked fine, not so sure it looks good though.

 The instructions call for cutting out the ornaments with a pinking sheers and just stitching them down a quarter inch from the edge.  This leaves the pinked edge exposed.  It's OK.  I don't love it.  I found it impossible to quilt a quarter inch from the pinked edge.  As I came around the curves the large fabric ornaments began to pull and distort on the bias.  In the end, I sewed more like half an inch in, and then cut the excess off while watching TV one evening.

I didn't like the way that sewing around the edge left a big pocket between the ornament and the body of the quilt.  I cannot do free motion quilting on my machine because I am too cheap to buy the specialist bobbin that is required.  There is also the issue of a lack of skill on my part, lol!  So, I used my machine's big hoop and one of the pre-programmed designs on the embroidery module to put a wreath motif in the centre of each ornament, thereby holding it close to the quilt.  This wasn't a disaster, but it doesn't really improve the quilt either.

Of course, you need a few pillows to go with the quilt.

I recovered the living room pillows to use up some of the left overs and because Christmas is coming and, of course, the house has to be *perfect!*  (It never is any other time of the year, but somehow, Christmas comes and I think with one last push I can do it all!)  The pillows look nice, but they won't last long.  Quilting cotton is really not thick enough for throw pillows in the living room.  I've bought myself some time to think about what we should have, but I haven't solved the cushion dilemma.