And The Prize Goes To...

Each month my friends at work and I make a goal list for the month 

using a common spreadsheet in Google.  

We change the color on the things we complete.  

The person that finishes all their tasks gets a chance to win a prize.  

You would not believe how this has motivated each of us to work hard to get our list completed.  

We are all, apparently, super competitive!  

The person that wins each month is not eligible for the prize the following month but must 

provide the prize for the next winner.  

It was my turn to provide the prize for April.  

I believe our winner will be our friend, Judith.  

I have been trying to make something rather than just give some fabric or something.  

Will I always have time to do that?  

Likely no, but I am going to try to make a little something each time it's my turn to give. 

 That being said, since I figured that Judith would win I started my plan to make something for her.

When I first met Judith, she had a Cockapoo named Goxie.  

He was mostly black but had a white/silver beard. 

 I found a photo of him to use as my color guide and 

began looking for a drawing I liked to use for the plan I had in mind.  

I found a pretty good drawing and worked to turn it into an applique.  

The problem with this is that the layers of the applique didn't really show up since he is all black. 

 I figured out if I outlined the black with white you would be able to see the outlines of the layers, 

so that's what I did.
Judith does editing for our lab so 

I used black fabric that had white words on it for the main part of the dog.

Ready to see what I'm talking about?  Here is the applique all built and ready to stitch around.

I decided that I was going to turn it into a pillow cover so found some black and white fabrics to use.

I used some that have significance. 

 There are birds, chemistry symbols, cats more words, houses and 

even one that says "Made with love".

Once I had the pillow top sewn together I put batting behind it so that 

when I outlined the dog's face it would "quilt" it at the same time.  

I dropped my feed dogs and used a straight stitch and FMQ 

(what I like to call scribble stitching) around the dog's face.  

Then I outlined his whole head.  You can see it best from the backside here.

This is what it looked like from the front side.

Then I put on my walking foot and did some straight line quilting. 

 I used some tape to mark my stitching line then guided off that line.  

Around the outside I did lines following the outline of the square of the pillow.  

This is the finished pillow cover and it will fit a 20" pillow form. 

 I made an envelope style back following the directions of Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts.  So easy!

I get to gift this on Monday.  I am sew excited to give this to Judith.  I hope she loves it!

I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for her Finish it Friday.

Have a great weekend!

~XOP~