With the decorations down, house cleaned, and laundry washed & folded, I was finally able to sit down in the sewing room and work on my first project of 2013: the Coastal Cruiser. This project took a bit more time that what I anticipated – I didn’t account for all the cutting and ‘quilting’ of the pillow itself, but it was well worth it because I love the end result.

The PDF was very straightforward – a good set of instructions even for a beginner although they do assume that you have some sewing background. I decided to use an applique stitch on my machine instead of straight stitching because I thought it looked neater and will keep the fabric from fraying so badly over time. However, when it came to quilting I did sew 1/2″ lines across the front and back of the pillow (I used the seam guide attachment to keep everything even, it’s a handy tool to have for your machine!), although I did not quilt over the applique design itself. I’ve decided that if I wind up making a second pillow, I’m going to have to use the BSR attachment for the background areas – it’s a perfect excuse to perfect my free motion quilting! The only complaint that I had with this project is a possible error that I found in the cutting directions: The instructions calls for the background and backing fabrics to be cut one side, but they are later referred to 1″ shorter. The fusible fleece has a similar problem (one is cut 18 x 8″), but it actually need to be 18 x 10″.

Overall, a great (free) pattern, beginner friendly, and perfect excuse to test out some quilting skills. I see more of these in my future (mostly because both kids have ‘claimed’ it as theirs)!