X's & O's Pillow Cover for Valentine's Day

I almost entitled this post XXX's and OOO's....then I quickly realized, that might bring me the type of traffic I'm not interested in...so I quickly omitted a few letters.  Wise choice...wouldn't you agree.

These are my Valentine's Pillow Covers.  I am pretty pleased with how they turned out.  In retrospect, I wouldn't have put the solid yellow fabric in.  It just sticks out a bit.  But in my mind I was thinking it was gold...like jewelry...and I felt like it would work for a V-Day pillow...now that it's all said and done, I should have gone with another cool tone.  But, this is not a pattern testing facility.  I sew in real time and don't have the time or resources to test things out much before I just jump in...both feet...into the deep end.  Sometimes it works, sometimes...I just go with it until I can make something else.  The patterned fabric is from Pat Bravo's Rock N Romance collections...and I think it worked perfectly.  Lovely, soft and romantic!

My X's.  I pondered quite a bit on how to make X pillows...there are several methods and then it dawned on me to make it in the method of a string quilt!  I am so happy with it.  Big smiles over here.  My Ghastlies Halloween Quilt and my husband's Man Quilt are both made with this method...so I clearly like it.  And you can do so many diverse things with this paper piecing technique.   I am actually thinking up a wall-hanging for My Oldest using these X's....we'll see what happens.  Good things, I'm sure.

My Os.  Ohhh.  I also love this pattern.  This is an old fashioned pattern called Shoo Fly and I think it was a blast to make.  I am going to put up tutorials for both of these patterns that I've made next week.  So, stay tuned.  The fun thing about this one, is it's really just a modified 9-patch...which means it works up really fast!  And sometimes, that's just what you want, some fun, fast sewing.

Of course for the back, I used my Pocket Pillow Tutorial which works up like a charm every time.  Listen, I am not going to go to the effort and pain of putting a zipper in my pillow cases when this works so well.

See..Peek-a-boo!  Me, as a hand model.  Thank you, thank you very much.  You can contact my agent for any further gigs.

These both were fun to make and even though I'm not 100% satisfied with some fabric choices, overall I am happy with them both.

Thanks for reading!

Heather