Sunflowers

My best friend and I finally exchanged Christmas gifts last week so I can now share the gifts that I made for her. I hadn't realized the habit I had gotten into of buying gifts for her as I shopped gift shops on vacations. I couldn't do much of that this year so I had to be creative. I was really stumped for a long time.

One day I was in the shower (where I solve most of my problems) and thought about things we did the past year and the biggest thing that came to mind was this project: her mosaic pizza oven. That gave me my sunflower theme and I was off and running. She has an outdoor screened porch so I thought that placemats and pillows for outdoor entertaining (or just lounging) might be good gifts.

I got out my Jacquard Color Magnet and borrowed this stencil from my friend, Marcy, to make some center panels for placemats. I absolutely love Color Magnet. The images are always so crisp.

Then I dyed 3 half yards with my own leaf and sunflower screen prints.

At the same time I dyed some lengths of denim in matching colors.

Starting with the pillows, I fused and the satin stitched two sunflower pillow covers.

I even had enough gold fabric to do piping. These should look pretty good on her outdoor furniture.

And I found these great sunflower buttons for the closures on the pillow backs. 

The placemats were really straightforward. I made 8 and each one has the gold center strip. With another strip top and bottom. I mixed the blue, green and tan among the placemats.

I had dyed a mottled fabric for the backing and I used that for the binding. These were really a lesson in letting the fabric do all the work. The piecing design couldn't be simpler.

The best part was finding these vintage Corelle sunflower plates! The set is finished off with dyed napkins. I even found matching plastic flatware in gold, vanilla, blue and green to match the set. She's ready for her first outdoor cookout.

I had a lot of fun making these and she really liked them. At least, she said that she did!

She got me a bunch of crochet stuff including some books and a big project tote and she gave me some really cool things that she's printed this year. She's been busy carving stamps and now I have a tote bag and some bandanas with her designs.

​Christmas in January is a good thing!