Scrappy tripalong pillow

I realised when I came to parcel my swap items up that I tend to craft large, and if I ever do another swap I need to work on my small items! Kristel was much more savvy and sent a wonderful array of little things in a padded envelope, I sent a gigantic box. What actually took up the space and required a box were the two tin can lanterns we sent, but also this pillow case - no I didn't send the inner but it's quite bulky sewn up. I had some blocks left over from putting together my scrappy tripalong quilt top and coincidentally four of them were exactly the right size to make a pillowcase that fits what we call a Euro pillow (not sure what Europeans call that size...)

I came across the technique of quilting the scrappy tripalong blocks with a line either side of every second seam on Red Pepper Quilts, and it works really well. I also went diagonally to try and emphasise the diamond pattern which wasn't particularly obvious on just a cushion, partly because of the prints and also because one of the blocks was put together slightly wrong but it was a pillow by the time I figured it out. Can you spot where I stuffed up? It was backed with plain linen quilted with wavy lines. Hazel was very dismissive of that technique, felt it wasn't attractive and was appalled I was going to be sending it to poor Kristel who could not fail to be displeased. Children, they are so free with their opinions! I haven't had any complaints back btw ;) She liked the front though, and so do I. I'm not sure if I have enough blocks to do one for myself, not that they take a long time to make up or anything!

Talking about the Euro pillow makes me think of a topic I often wonder about - here in NZ, and in Canada from memory, furniture and other items are often advertised as "European design" or "Italian design" or "made in Germany" and all these terms are used to tell us that it's really stylish or that it's well-made, or both. So what I always wonder is how those items are advertised in those countries - do Europeans assume that things made there are stylish like we do here? Or that if it's made in Germany it won't fall apart in 2 weeks? Well actually that's usually true of the stuff that gets here, but I bet they make crap stuff too. Do Italians like to be told shoes are made with Italian leather? Drat, now I've got Ricardo Montalban saying "rich Corinthian leather" in my head, over and over again...