Princess Twilight Sparkle cushion

This week one half of the power duo who are the namesakes of my blog turned five.

Ms Moo is going through a high intensity My Little Pony phase and so I thought I would make a MLP cushion for her. I asked which was her favourite which resulted in her naming all of them, so I made an executive decision to make Princess Twighlight Sparkle. 

I got the pattern from here. It is paper pieced and finishes at 10 inches square. Let me just say that there are a lot of teeny tiny pieces in this. See that eye? Twenty six (!!) pieces. Still, it was relatively easy piecing and I banged it out in a few nights. The process was greatly expedited by sticking pins through the end of the sew lines and marking them with a heat erasable pen. With the number of pieces and dark fabric there was no way that holding it up to the light in the garage was going to work. 

I backed it with fusible fleece to quilt as a few of my seams were quite scant and I thought that might give the pillow some extra longevity. Of course, I backed it with the Mustang ponies - there was really no other choice. I put a zipper in using this tutorial from Svetlana at s.o.t.a.k handmade. This was the first time I have used binding on a pillow and I love the way it turned out. 

So how was it received? With a maximum of excitement. The only gift that topped it was the Rainbow Dash play doh thingie. I did get told that it was missing the horn, but that hasn't stopped it being slept with every night since her birthday. I would count this as a success. That level of excitement about a gift is definitely one of the things I love the most about being able to sew.