Pixelated Baller Pillow–Pixel Play Quilt Complete

When I saw that the Project QUILTING Challenge was Pixel Play I immediately went to pinterest and found ideas to add to my Project QUILTING quilt inspiration board.   Pixel art is so cool and so inspiring! I did have to be realistic though.  While I always think I have a lot of time to work on these pieces I forget about all the work that is involved behind the scenes of this quilt challenge and what I need to accomplish to keep my creative business – Persimon Dreams going smoothly to those looking in. 

My daughter, Capri, was about to have a birthday so I finally decided to make something for her.  I’m going to admit – I have the easiest time getting presents and making things for Capri.  She loves tiny things, art supplies, tsum tsums, tea sets and basketball and more.  My biggest problem with her is that I tend to over-buy or over-do things so I have to make sure to reign myself in and not spoil her too much.  I couldn’t get this idea of a pixelated basketball pillow out of my head for Capri so I just decided to go for it.

I decided to make the basketball out of pixel circles.  I’ll share with you my process below!

The Process

I pulled black fabric and a few different scraps of orange fabric out to use for the pixels of my basketball.  HeatNBond Lite was cut out into chunks that would fit onto the wrong sides of these fabrics and fused down.  Once I had my fused fabrics I took a vintage wooden spool of thread to use as my circle template.  With a Micron pen (really any pen works, I just happened to have a Micron pen at the moment), I traced as many circles as I could onto each piece of fused fabric.

I used a pair of Karen Kay Buckley’s Perfect Scissors to cute the circles out.  The worked fabulously! 

The key is to have some really good, sharp scissors so the cutting goes quickly and smoothly. Before I knew it I had a pile of circle pixels!

Capri’s favorite color is mint so I decided the base of the pillow would be made with a piece of ombre confetti metallic mint fabric designed by V and Co. 

At first I thought I would block the pixels so they were adjacent to each other.  It didn’t feel quite right though.

Instead, I decided to mix up the orange fabrics in  a more random method.  Capri agreed that this looked more pleasing.  Have I mentioned?  I’m horrible with secrets so as soon as I decided to make this pillow I filled Capri in with my plans and she watched each step come to fruition. 

I free motion quilted each pixel down to the pillow top with Aurifil 4648.  I used my walking foot to echo quilt the remaining mint fabric.

A pillowcase back was added and a standard edge quilt binding was added.  I prefer the look of this instead of the standard pillowcase method.

I just think it adds a fun detail to the piece.  Also – if you ever decide you don’t want it as a pillow and instead a mini wall hanging – it’s easy to convert!

Capri was thrilled and has slept with her pillow ever night since her birthday!  Mission accomplished!

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