Making it my own #mystashmystyle

I'm so excited to share this project with you today - it's part of the #mystashmystyle contest I'm co-hosting with my fellow Martingale author, Jenifer Gaston. We're using each other's projects to re-imagine and re-style with our own stashes.

My inspiration project came from Jeni's book, Primitive Style. On the book cover, the pillow on the left of the bench is her project called "Resting Place". Isn't that sweet?! So perfect for Spring. I loved it and decided to make it over in my style.

My helpful hint for changing up fabric selection on a project: pay attention to value as you make your substitutions. So for example, my background fabric is grey - not beige as in the original - but the value (in this case, lightness) of the fabric is about the same. I did the same when picking the alternate fabrics for the leaves, bird, flowers, etc. This way you'll still end up with the same effect... but in your own color-way.

My fabric pull for my project...of course I have my seam ripper out, just in case!

Since I wasn't using wool like the Primitive Style project, I made three major changes to make the project work for me - yes! you really can do that!:

First, I decided to use fusible applique and top-stitch on my machine.

Fusible applique with top stitching in progress...

Second, because I was using cotton and I wanted to include batting for a nice finish on my pillow, I layered the batting behind my appliqued pillow top and quilted the two layers together before finishing the construction of my pillow. Here's what the quilting looked like from the back side - you can see it a little better than on the finished project.

Quilting shown from the back...

And third, I decided to change out the penny rug curved edges on the original project with nested prairie points so I would still have a similar design element with a nice finished edge. Prairie points let me do that. They are super easy, here's a link to tutorial on prairie points. And just fyi - for my pillow, I kept all of Jeni's original cutting and instruction sizes, I just started my nested prairie points with 5" squares.


And here's my finished project in my style!

Front

Envelope-fold back

I have to share these last pics because I thought it was pretty funny. I didn't realize I was even re-creating the photo from the book until I was all done!

Original book image from Primitive Style...courtesy of Martingale.

My amateur photo shoot image of my project...:)

Well, I hope that gives you some ideas and gets your stash mo-jo rolling about how you can take a project and change it up to make it #mystashmystyle ! This project was so much fun!

It's not too late to jump in on the contest - we're just getting started. Here's the link to the original post with all of the details. You can also follow along on Instagram or Facebook with #mystashmystyle.

Also, be sure to check out Jeni's blog post about her first #mystashmystyle project that she re-made from my book, Stash Lab. I love how her's turned out. It's beautiful. We look forward to seeing yours!

Happy stash quilting,

Tonya