triangles

To my family's surprise (and delight) I've been slowly working on replacing the many very colorful pillows in our family room with more muted colors and simpler patchwork. 

This is my newest addition to a more grown up family room and I really, really love how this simple triangle patchwork pillow cover turned out.

I started out by picking this lovely stack from my stash and cutting it into isosceles triangles. I used this ruler for all the cutting and highly recommend you get one if you're planning on doing any triangle patchworking. 

Once I arranged my triangles though, there was something about all these colors together I didn't quite like. I think it was too much pattern and too many saturated colors with no breathing space, so I decided to get rid of some fabrics completely, use less of others, and add more low volume and whitish solids to the mix.

This was my second layout and while I still like the original stack of fabrics, I think this version feels way more "me".

 

And, in the name of keeping things simple, I did and all over straight line quilting for the front, and used Ellen Baker's origami paper cranes linen for the back of the pillow.

This pillow cover finished at 18" square.

Now, I know sewing triangles into patchwork is more tricky than squares or rectangles might be. So, if you want to give it a try but are unsure about how to do it so your points match up, I recommend you give Adrianne's tutorial a try. It's fantastic, you'll love it!!

Svetlana