Flora Herringbone Pillows (and a Giveaway!)

Something exciting happened to me this week.  I was asked if I wanted to play with the new Flora fabric by Kelly Ventura for Windham fabrics.  Naturally I said, "Heck yeah!"

I started working on them as soon as they hit my doorstep (I can neither confirm nor deny that I stalked the Fedex truck).  I love the prints and colors in this line.  Kelly Ventura is a surface designer and it shows - each fabric looks like an individual watercolor painting (I just had a lightbulb moment as I was writing this - think of how great they would look wrapped around a canvas and hung on the wall!).  The tealy-sage fabrics really jumped out at me in particular.  And those brush stroke prints...be still my heart.

I wanted a way to showcase all of the fabrics together and a herringbone pattern immediately came to mind.  I had been wanting to try the quilt-as-you-go herringbone tutorial by Maureen Cracknell for a long time and thought this was the perfect opportunity.  I cut my strips at 2.5 inches wide and randomly layered them as I went.

I used Essex linen in black for the backing.  Doesn't the Flora fabric pair perfectly with that linen! It's like they were made for each other.  

For the closure, I inserted a zipper using my favorite zipper closure tutorial by s.o.t.a.k.  If you've been afraid of zippers, don't be!  They add such a professional finish to pillows and are not difficult to install.

I am so pleased with how these pillows turned out.  I'll be shipping them off to a special friend next week.  As for Flora, I already have another project with this beautiful fabric in the works!  If you'd like a chance to win your own bundle of these lovelies, hop on over to the Windham Fabrics blog today!