Quiet Little Project

I've been feeling a little under the weather....but this hand stitched cathedral window pincushion was the perfect quiet little project while I was laying low.

When I first moved to Lexington almost 11 years ago the Project Group at our church was in the middle of a cathedral quilt banner for the sanctuary.  I had my own cathedral quilt going so I knew the drill and jumped right in.  You can read about that church project in this post.

Just recently I found a few of the leftover batik background squares and knew they would make a nice pincushion.  I chose one of my random batik quilt blocks and a swatch of batik fabric for the inserts and plopped myself in front of the TV and stitched.

The first step was to hand stitch the two squares together creating a new square in the middle.  I should have shared a photo of my first attempt where I had one block flipped to the wrong side and had to rip it out.  I guess my head was a little fuzzy.

Next I trimmed up my quilt square and pinned it into the middle and folded down and stitched the edges of the square creating the "window."  I also folded back the opposite edges creating that nice rounded pattern around the "window."  For interest I added some blue quilting lines on the quilt patch.

The next step was to fold it in half with the wrong sides together and hand stitch that edge making a bit of a cuff or a tube and creating another square for the batik swatch insert.

 

I repeated the process on the back inserting the batik square then stuffed and stitched the remaining openings.  Finally I added beads for a bit of interest.

There are lots of things you can do with a cathedral window pattern using different background colors and inserts. It's all handwork so that you can take it anywhere.

I have often thought it would make a beautiful long stained glass like piece with black background squares and bright batik inserts. hmmmmmm.  

I just did a quick online search and found this quilt by Jo Avery that gives me an idea of what it looks like with a black background. I'm picturing one long and skinny with rich batiks or even bright solids.  

Here are some other images I found online that I thought were interesting.  

I liked that this one had contrasting fabrics that are exposed after you fold down the edges of the window.  I actually think I made another pin cushion a while back experimenting with this....but it's in Lexington.  I'll look for it when I get home.  This quilt can be found here on Favequilts.com.

This pattern was interesting found on the Quilting Digest site.  These pillows were done by machine but could be done by hand.

And finally this one with a pin-dot background and bright colors made into a pillow.  The possibilities are endless. 

You can read all my posts about cathedral window quilts here which includes a little wall hanging I made for my friend Lynn in Madison many years ago to coordinate with a few of her watercolors in a bathroom.