Craft night and Emma's Tree

My daughter, Maili, has wanted to do a regular craft night. We were supposed to get together to make Christmas ornaments but that never happened. So, in order to keep to some sort of commitment she gave me 12 "coupons" so that we could have craft night (or afternoon) once a month. Last month she wanted to make a floor pillow. I had no need for one but I did help with the drawing of the pattern, the measuring of the fabric and I was the consultant when it came to sewing it together. The top and bottom fabrics came from my stash and looked like they may have been curtains at one time. The side fabric is an old curtain that she bought from Value Village or Goodwill and decided to recycle because she liked the colours.        

This is some of the fabric she was going to use but the top yellow fabric was discarded in favour of the more neutral colour that I had in my stash.

                                         
Clever idea. Since we didn't know initially how big or how small or even what shape to make the floor pillow, Maili decided to use Christmas wrapping paper from the roll. I just folded over one corner and cut it into a square and we went from there. We ended up with a round pillow that was made by folding the square into quarters and using a pencil with a string attached to draw a quarter of a circle. (you hold the end of the string in the middle and then draw a line with the pencil - like you've learned way back when)

This is the end result all sewn by my daughter. she double stitched all the seams since it will most likely get a lot of use and wear. She does wonderful hand stitching so that is what I told her to do to close off the side. I just measured the paper pattern and it is 27.5 inches and I am pretty sure that she used half inch seams and the sides are 15 inches since I used my 15 inch square to cut the fabric. Quick and error-free. It is stuffed with scraps of fabric and batting and it also has an old winter coat that my husband donated. She thinks it's too big and it did take a lot of stuff to stuff it with. There was even enough fabric that she cut a rectangular shape to make another floor cushion BUT we don't have enough stuff to fill it yet.

Other things:
I have been busy doing other things. My two other daughters come home this weekend (one from London, England and one from British Columbia) so I have been trying to get the house in order. It will be nice to have the whole family together since they didn't come for Christmas. 
I have also managed to make another Emma's Tree. I plan on giving it to my mom and replacing it with the one I made her at Christmas. This one is more of a generic colour and can stay up in her room all year round if she wants. 

I photographed it sitting on the new floor pillow before it left my home.  I love the colours and will be making more in just various greens. It has a flat batting (I don't know the type or the name - could be a piece of pellon) and I machine quilted it just to hold everything in place. I also sewed a ring in the back so it can hang on the wall.

Oh, one more thing. I really don't like hexagons and would never make a grandmother's flower garden quilt BUT just maybe I would put a couple together to make a wall hanging like this one -
http://laplandyellow.blogspot.com/2010/02/zo-af-en-toe.html
Click on the photo to see it in all its glory. Simply beautiful!!! Marja does wonderful work. Use google translator.