Constructing the horse took me a while- I am not extremely proficient at paper piecing still. But the hand quilting was definitely more time consuming. I used some DMC perle cotton to outline the horse, the paper pieced square, and 30+ tiny squares 1" squares framing him.
It took quite a while to cut and piece about 320" tiny 1.5" (1" finished) squares for the patchwork border. I knew the math was easy to go bigger with 2.5" squares but I wanted this to be special and help highlight the horse. I struggled a little with finding the right shades of green in my stash- I wish modern fabrics were a little more diverse in their color ranges!
I used my long hoarded Happy Holiday print of these adorable Santa knomes for a zippered back closure.
It was difficult to decide whether this guy should be a pillow or a wall hanging but I decided that the pillow might be more "useful," I wasn't sure of where I would hang a seasonal mini quilt, and I already had the 24" form.
A big thanks for this awesome pattern by Julianna at Sewing Under the Rainbow for sharing her talents in creating this Dala Horse design.
My husband was happy with it and probably especially pleased that the madness of trying to complete this was finally over. For several nights, I literally sat in a small hallway in the living room away from him (while we watched a movie) to be able to complete all of the hand quilting without him catching a glimpse.
Linking up with Julianna's blog:
3 comments:
Great finish! I'm glad that you could make a pillow for your husband and that he loves it!
Very cute! And awesome commitment to hide in the hall to keep it a surprise!
What a beautiful horse- perfect for sitting with while eating a nice cinnamon bun for real Swedish flavour!
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