Busy Girl Sews Tour

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Heidi Staple's new book Sew Organized for the Busy Girl. I have been following Heidi's blog Fabric Mutt for the longest time. She is talented and creative so I knew her book was going to be good and it sure is.

Heidi's book features both tips for being organized to maximize your sewing time and also 23 lovely projects. I love the mid-century modern graphic design of the book too. 

I am still absorbing the tips, from both Heidi and a number of bloggers and friends, about how to use the little sewing time that I have more efficiently - they are excellent ideas. Many of the projects in the book are also designed to make your more organized and I will be making several of them I am sure.

When Heidi asked me to pick a project for the blog hop, I knew I wanted to make the Brass Ring Pillow. The photo above is from the book - Heidi designed such a pretty understated pillow of light colours and low volume background fabrics, I could not resist it. However, I wanted to make a version that could live in my family room or perhaps with my teenage boys.

I've shared work in progress photos of this pillow here and on instagram already. I decided to use fabrics from April Rhodes' lines Wanderer and Arizona and added in several low volume favourites. I matchstick quilted the pillow front. I am sure pleased with it - I kept the scrappy low volume design while added a south west flare.



For the back, I pieced strips of the same fabrics and then quilted them with straightish lines unevenly spaced but not matchstick, maybe 1/8" to 3/4" apart.



My one adaptation on the Heidi's easy to follow directions was to use an invisible zipper.



I love the back, it is such a nice compliment to the detailed piecing on the front and adds a bit of colour to this low volume pillow.



It is hard - at least for me - to photograph a low volume background so that you can see the prints, so my photos are a little darker than normal to show it off as best I could. Those subtle prints add a lot of interest when one gets closer to the pillow.

One of the nice things about Sew Organized for the Busy Girl is that Heidi has added several ideas for variations on the patterns. For this pattern, she suggests the cutest baby quilt, and I might just have to make that too, we shall see.

I highly recommend Heidi's book! Every Monday for the next few months, different bloggers will be showing off projects, here is where to follow the blog tour:

March 30 - Lynne of Lily's Quilts (Tour Kickoff & Book Giveaway!)

April 6 -      Jodi of Tales of Cloth & Angela of Cut to Pieces

April 13 -     Lindsay of Craft Buds & Debbie of A Quilter's Table

April 20 -    Leanne of She Can Quilt (that's me)

April 27 -    Fat Quarter Shop

May 4 -      Erin of Why Not Sew?

May 11 -      Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts

May 18 -     Svetlana of SOTAK Handmade

May 25 -    Lucy of Charm About You

June 1 -       Maureen of Maureen Cracknell Handmade

June 8 -      Becca of Bryan House Quilts

June 15 -     Beth of Plum & June

June 22 -    Jessica of Quilty Habit

June 29 -    Caroline of Sew Can She

July 6 -       Heidi of Fabric Mutt (Tour Wrap!)

Best,

Leanne