Challenge Accepted - A Free Motion Pumpkin Pillow

There is a challenge going on over at Quilt Shop Gal involving pumpkins, pillows, and free motion quilting. Of course I had to join in on the fun. I discovered this challenge by way of Lori Kennedy of The Inbox Jaunt. She contributed to the challenge by writing a tutorial for the project. And since I'm already enrolled in her Divide and Conquer class over at Craftsy, I couldn't resist the opportunity to learn even more. 

The first step is to draw out your ideas. As you can see, I'm quite sketchy about this stage. A few scribbles and I'm ready to sew.

Once I had a concept of what I wanted to do, I used a blue water soluble pen and marked my fabric.

I spent a lot of time on Lori's blog, browsing through all of her tutorials. I think choosing which designs to use took longer than the actual quilting. I learned a few lessons along the way with this project. The first is to not choose such busy fabric. I just love this picture, but guess what. This is from the back. The nice, plain, solid back.

The spider web looks cool. Can you see the spider on the left side?

The dragonfly turned out good. It doesn't matter what season it is. You know I have to have a dragonfly somewhere on almost every project.

The details show up so nicely on the BACK!

The front... well, the front is a little busy.

It's not horrible. It's simply a lesson learned. I suppose it partially comes from the concept that busy fabric hides quilting mistakes but I really did think it was plain enough when I chose it. Here's the dragonfly.

Once the quilting was completed, it was squared up, layered and bound just like a regular quilt. The only difference is the back is two pieces that overlap so that a pillow form can be stuffed inside.

I liked it a little better once it became a pillow. And I was very pleased with my quilting. One of the things Lori said in her tutorial is that you wouldn't want to stop at just one. And she might be right. This project took about three hours from start to finish. I'm hoping to find a few free hours lurking in my weekend. We will see.

Linking to Quilt Shop Gal's October Free Motion Quilting Challenge and Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Also linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Other posts with free motion quilting
A Few Quilted Flowers
Collaborative Quilt for a Teacher
Believe Circle Quilt Finish