Umbrella Prints Trimmings competition 2012

A couple of months ago I saw something online about the Umbrella Prints Trimmings Competition and before I knew it I had a trimmings pack in my cart and it was on the way to my house.  

The trimmings are really lovely. I particularly like the flower print in the bottom left and the raindrop print in the upper right.  The colors are really nice, but not colors that I generally use so I was a little stumped about what I was going to do.  I have been wanting to make some big, squishy pillows for my kids to use in the living room so I thought I'd give that a shot.

My first attempt was . . . a complete failure.  It was totally boring and it got folded up and lost in my sewing stuff for a few weeks because I had no desire to finish it.  Luckily I cleaned out my drawers, found the lost trimmings, picked out lots of stitches, and started over.  This pillow was . . . um. . . definitely a learning experience.  I won't go into the details, but there were some technical difficulties.  It didn't turn out like I expected at all, but I am still really happy with it.  

In addition to the trimmings pack, I used some Freespirit solids, Moda bella solids, quilter's linen, essex linen, and a DS Quilts print.  

On the back I used quilter's linen, the DS Quilts Meadow Lark print, and a strip of Monaluna Anika that I had just happened to pick up as a remnant at my LQS earlier in the day.

I am really excited to see what everyone else has made.  The main appeal about the competition (other than getting some beautiful Umbrella Prints fabrics) was that I would get to see all of the fun things that other people create.