Ruadhri - The FPP Highland Cow

Hang around here long enough and you're bound to know that I love sewing up FPP patterns designed by Juliet @The Tartankiwi and I often test new patterns for her.  When I was sent her new book to review (you can read my review here) I HAD to make up one of the 12 patterns and it HAD to be - The Highland Cow.  

As I mentioned in my Animal Quilts book review, The Highland Cow is my daughter Flicky's fave animal from her four years at The University of St Andrews in Scotland.  

Flicky graduated, earlier this year, with a Masters in Modern History, the pic above is of my three kids adults at her graduation, and she is now living her dream as crew on a luxury yacht.  I snapped the pic below when I was given a tour a couple of weeks ago.

To get back to the Highland Cow, I absolutely HAD to make up this pattern into a pillow cushion so she can have it with her on her seafaring adventures.

Ruadhri - The FPP Highland Cow

The fabrics I've used are Uncorked, Another Point of View for Windham Fabrics.  They're gorgeous, and here's the info from the Windham website "cotton fabric designed to look like colored cork fabric. Metallic accents. 100% cotton fabric. No special instructions needed for use."  Available in-store and online this month, I lucked out a few weeks ago when Windham sent me an FQ bundle of the full collection to play with.

So this is my fabric pull from the collection and I've teamed it with a crazy, heavy purple and white dot called Flurry (Grape) by Dashwood Studios.

 

As always, when I do FPP, I allocated a coloured pencil to each fabric,

and coloured my paper templates.

Materials + Tools

Below are links to some of the materials and tools I've used for this project, and love.

Note: I'm an Amazon affiliate and may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, on any purchase made by following an Amazon link. Thanks for your support which enables me to carry on blogging.

       

Let's jump forward now and look at the completed sections,

and then the finished back with papers still attached.  You can see that I remove my seam papers to allow me to press the seams in the best direction to suit the design and the 3D effect I want to achieve.

My FPP Tips

   

And, this is how the finished front looks - measuring 20" square.

  

Next, I layered the finished top with batting and muslin backing and lightly quilted it.  A simple quilted outline inside the horns and face knocked them back and a quilted line outside the highland cow outline allowed the hair and snout to sit further forward. 

Here you can see how I've quilted it on the back.

And a closer look at the quilted front.

 

So what to do for the back - using my selvedge fabric technique, I made the back panel from the Uncorked selvedges and then used my Hidden Zipper and No More Bunny Ears tutes to finish the cushion.

My Selvedge Tutes

    

My Pillow Cushion Tutes

  

The Finished Pillow Cushion

And why Ruadhri?

The Scottish word Ruadhri, pronounced 'roo-ir-ee', means redhead - very apt don't you think?!

If you'd like to make your own FPP Highland Cow the pattern is one of 12 available in the new FPP book Animal Quilts by Juliet van der Heijden.  Again, you can read my review here and you can buy the book from Amazon (affiliate link) and other bookstores too.

Take further inspiration from the other FPP patterns I've tested for Juliet previously.  Click any of the images below to go through to my post about testing that particular pattern:

      

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Ruadhri - The FPP Highland Cow

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