Masquerade Extras

The completion of Masquerade, a quilt in the making for nine years, was announced last month in my post for 10/16/20. You do not make a quilt from 173 hexagons, each from 6 equilateral triangles, without having some leftover triangles. What a shame to toss out those perfectly uniform shapes as scraps. I joined them together as far as they would go in quasi-random order to make one side of a pillow. I was not free-spirited enough to be totally random. Total randomness would have resulted in two triangles of the same color falling side by side somewhere, and I prohibited that from happening. 

I also had a narrow strip of the mask fabric left over. Not large enough to make a pillowcase but certainly adequate to add a focus band on a pillow. I flat fell seamed a blue band and a green band on either side of this mask piece. 

I joined the banded mask section to the pieced triangle section right sides together to create sort of wrap-around seams. The result was a tube size 21" x 13".  I sewed one short end closed and turned the unit right side out. A couple straight stitching lines an inch or so in from the long edges gave it two solid-color flanges.  This pillow was a quick, spontaneous, impromptu creation so I added no zipper nor Velcro nor overlapping flap. I stuffed it as is and machine sewed the remaining short edge closed. The result was this pillow. The following photos show front and back – or maybe back and front depending on your preference. 

But wait! I still had some half-equilateral triangles left over from the edges of the strips used to cut the full triangles. How could I waste those luscious colors and toss them in the trash? Granted they were small and showed the selvage printing, but that could be interesting, too. I sewed them together matching those with similar angle slants and leaving the selvage printing in place. Some were bigger than others but since they had all been cut from 3½" strips, they made several uniform width columns. If grouped judiciously, they could approach approximately equal heights. I had leftover piped, striped binding from the Masquerade quilt, so I tucked some in the seam at either end before adding orange vertical edge strips. After trimming, I added blue and green horizontal bands on the top and bottom as on the previous pillow. I sized the added blue and green strips such that this pillow also ended up at 21" x 13". Since these blue and green bands were narrower, I chose not to stitch them flat as flanges. They adjoined a swirly orange back in a continuous soft contour.

Again, I stuffed this pillow without much extra decorum or attention to future removal of the cover. If dirty, it can be tossed in the washer and dryer as is. Here is the front and back after stuffing to be plump, yet soft and squishy.

 

But wait! I still had two equilateral triangles and some more black and white striped binding. This was enough to make this little 9" square pillow. Depending on your screen size when you are reading this post, the image made be bigger than the pillow. Perhaps I should  call it a pillow-ette? 

The front fabric of the quilt was not all I had left over. I had 8 yards of the fabric to use for the backing of the king-size quilt. See my 9/16/20 post for the story behind the graphic blue backing fabric. There was a fair amount remaining, but not necessarily in the size configuration for a pair of king size pillowcases. But I am quilter! I can piece! Aha! I was careful to use flat fell seams so there would be no raw edges nor bumps where the sleeper might choose to lay his head. My resulting jigsaw puzzle ended up with an embedded mask band in the discontinuous backing fabric and a pillowcase border of black and white stripe binding fabric. The white accent band was from the same piping fabric as the quilt binding.

So here are the three pillows, a pillowcase, and a section of Masquerade folded back to expose the backing fabric. I had better be dark in my daughter's bedroom. This is a pretty wild combination of colors and shapes and patterns, not necessarily conducive to falling asleep.

The trio of scrap pillows is displayed on a small bench at the foot of my bed prior to my mailing them to my daughter. I am not sure where she will place them in her bedroom or if her 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son will make off with them.

Here is the entire collection: Masquerade quilt, two pillowcases, and three pillows. I have already shipped off all the components to Oklahoma as of this post. I am still six months before her 10th wedding anniversary next May.