Ugly Sweater Block Pillow

Several weeks ago I saw all these incredibly fun Ugly Sweater Blocks popping up on Instagram. I resisted for a few weeks but seriously, how can you resist making something so cute? 

The first one I made was in a plaid fabric by Jeni Baker. My gorgeous quilted Santa received a lot of comments. He was purchased in New Orleans in 1987 and is a family favorite Christmas decoration.

The next Ugly Sweater Block I made was with this cute panda print by Animaland.  Who can resist a panda butt?

Keeping with the "ugly" theme, my next block was made with a C&S print. The print is not ugly, but I would never wear a sweater made from this fabric.

The last sweater is an old strawberry print fabric I had in my stash. Enough said...this would be an incredibly ugly sweater in real life.

I decided to make a pillow with the four blocks. I know some have made enough blocks for a quilt; I am not that ambitious. These blocks are very time consuming. I can see making many more as a long term project, but that's a project for another time.

I asked Mr. Romance to take a photo of me holding the pillow...he thought Martha should be in the photo. 

Here's a better photo of what I asked him to focus on. I asked him to take a photo of the Feed Me Tacos sweater and the pillow; no make-up equals no face photos  please. My cute sweater was purchased from  my daughter-in-law's shop LolaJeannine.  Isn't it fun?

When it came time to quilt the pillow I knew I wanted to make the sweaters pop, so I quilted the white areas surrounding the sweaters quite densely, leaving the actual sweaters unquilted. I used a C&S print from the Tinsel line to finish the pillow front and used straight lines spaced appoximately 1/2 inch apart to quilt it.

I had this fantastic print from Carolyn Friedlander's Carkai line for the back of the pillow. It coordinates so well with the Tinsel fabric.

A zipper hidden behind a flap makes the pillow completely washable. I like to remove the pillow cover to store it in the off season. So now I'll need to make a second pillow cover to fit this form.

The finished pillow fits a 14"x28" pillow form. I just love it so much. It will be gifted this Christmas.