First, I have a winner to announce!  Have you seen all of the fantastic Sliced Coins quilts?  Hop on over to the gallery to check them out.  This quilt along has been so much fun!   Drumroll, please...the winner of the $25 Sew Fresh Fabrics gift certificate is... Katie!  Katie, I'll send you an email to get all of your details.  I can't wait to see what fabrics you choose :)
Over the weekend, I was a very busy bee, between sewing and attempting to research how to make Mr. Don't Call Me Betsy's diet a dairy-free one.  After much poking, prodding, and testing, we've learned he's way beyond lactose intolerant, he's violently intolerant of anything dairy.  Trust me when I say that reading labels at the supermarket with a toddler is really and truly unfun.  I did, however, manage to get a good bit of sewing done.

I've officially finished my Cathedral Windows pillow for my Urban Home Goods swap partner.  Yay!


My partner has a thing for black and red, so I went for a black, white, and red cathedral windows pillow for my main item in this swap.  I've seen so many different Cathedral Windows pieces in this last year that have been so inspiring to me, and I've been wanting to try this style of piecing for a while now.  It was tedious, definitely, but nowhere near as difficult as it seems.


I used a two-part tutorial that Heather wrote a while back, and I definitely recommend it.  I love Heather's writing style, to begin with, and it's no different with her tutorials.  Everything is very straight-forward and there are many pictures to help you feel like you're on the right path.  Cathedral windows definitely involve a lot of ironing, which is not high on my list of fun things to do, but with the right music on my iPod, almost anything can seem enjoyable.


It was a lot of fun to put this pillow together for my partner and I hope she'll love it as much as I do.  A part of me sees another one of these projects in my future, either a mini-quilt or a pillow, for my sewing room.

For my smaller item, I decided to make a little mug rug, using some of the scraps from the pillow and then some. I had really wanted to make some with a rainbow of colors, because that's the color scheme that I'm apparently very into at the moment, but it's not my partner's listed cup of tea, so I thought I should stick with this color scheme that she mentioned.   I spotted lots of bento-box-style quilts in my partner's favorites, so I thought I'd do a little rectangular twist on a modified bento box block, and here's what I came up with.  I think it's pretty cute.  I backed it with Kona Black and sashed and bound with Kona White, and I'm really pleased with how the straight-line quilting turned out on this, too.


Two swaps down, one swap to go - next up, Make Mine Modern.  I'm really excited about what I've been sketching for this swap, can't wait to get started on it next.  Happy sewing!


I'm linking up today with {Sew} Modern Mondays over at Canoe Ridge Creations.  Go check it out to see what everyone else is making in a modern kind of way :)