A Finish - Modern Irish Quilters Swap

Today is the postal date for our Modern Quilters Ireland swap!  This year, we have been making Christmas cushions, for our assigned partner.  It's a secret swap and my partner doesn't know I am making for her but I hope she'll like this as much as I do.

I had great fun with this little project!  I was going to hand quilt it but then changed my mind.  I wanted swirly quilting in the white to suggest a bit of a snow storm and once I had that on, the hand quilting didn't feel right.  I put a bit in the blue star points but you can barely see it!

I also changed my mind on the backing fabric.

I was going to use the Folk Art Holiday fabric but then thought it would be better used to bind the cushion and frame the star, so I dug into my Ikea 2014 Christmas print.  I have a few yards of this home decoration weight cotton to make into a table cloth.  I really like it as the backing!

The Folk Art fabric worked really well then for binding front and back.  I used two 2.5" strips x width of fabric and a 3/8" seam to have it even both sides of the cushion.  Clover wonder clips held everything in place (love them!!!) and then zig-zagged it all down!

The star burst was quilted in straight lines using a walking foot and the star and ray were quilted in the ditch too to make them stand up a bit from the background.

Lastly, to accompany the cushion, we were to make a small Christmas tree decoration.  Mine was made of scraps from Joy by Kate Spain as was the red in the cushion above.

So all done and another tick off the Christmas list - getting there!  Just have to put up our tree today now so I can hang my decoration from last years swap!  Love this little touch and hope it will be a yearly tradition!

Mum saw this finished yesterday and given her track record of swiping cushions,  I had to tell her hands off it's spoken for!  So this is going in the post today - hope you like it partner!

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts and