French Knot/Stacked Coin Pillow - First Etsy Post!

After many months of putting it off, I've finally opened my Etsy store!! You can check it out here:

http://swallowdesigns.etsy.com

... and this project is the first item I've posted there!

This is a fairly unique project for me, because I did it pretty much on the fly - I didn't sketch it out on graph paper beforehand. In fact, what I really wanted to do was something more liked a traditional "stacked coin" design. I'm having trouble finding a definition of what this means, but as far as I can tell it's essentially a design that incorporates strips of stacked patches, framed in neutral sashing.

I wanted to show you some examples on Flickr but got these results instead.

This quilt from Miss MeShell was really the inspiration - I love how she combined a deliciously simple linen with citrusy fabrics. She blogged it here and it's well worth checking it out!

My project veered off this plan, as you'll see soon...



I started with a pile of strips from my scrap box. I sorted them out for the blues, oranges, tans, and browns - which wasn't really hard because most of my projects lately have been in those spectrums. It was more a matter of weeding out the odd green scrap.



This part of the process went super-quick - I actually placed the sewing machine on my ironing board and did the whole thing standing up. This saved a lot of time. Plus it made it easier to watch TV. Can you tell I like to multitask?



I ironed each strip just before sewing it to the previous one, but I didn't iron the whole patched piece until I was done. Enjoyably spontanous compared with some of my more laborious projects, and certainly efficient.

When I finished preparing the large strip patch, I cut it into 4 pieces. However, after some thought, I ditched the traditional vertical parallel lines of stacked coins. I didn't have any linen, and it just didn't look as cool on the dark brown background.



So, I decided to use them as a frame for one of my French knots projects. I made this particular one a while ago, and they were inspired by the Connect the Dots tutorial from the purl bee, one of my favorite blogs from my good friends at purl soho. And by good friends I mean advisors/teachers/dealers of irresistable fabrics!



The back is an envelope flap, using the remaining "stack coined" (if I can call them that) strips:



Remember folks, this item is actually live and on sale on my store on Etsy! Why now? How did I finally set it up? Well, I ran out of room for my pillows. I'd love to keep them all, but there's only so much room I have on my bed and couch. The good thing is, it frees me up to use different colors - ones that don't match my lamp, sheets, and other accessories. I'm looking forward to seeing how that frees up my creative process.