It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas....

...inside my house, and I love it!  This is another of Joanne's Snowalong snowflakes, Version 1 of Snowflake 4, which I've turned into a cushion cover.

Nestled amongst the Nootka Cypress branches, so Christmasy!

Snuggled up together on our loveseat:

The quilt sandwich.  I quilted it with multi-coloured Sulky Sliver (like a ribbon) Metallic in the borders and a regular silver-coloured metallic on the snowflake.  (Note: those aren't typos: sliver as in flat, ribbon-style thread, and silver, as in colour!)

The silver reads a little dark in the pictures on the snowflake, but in person, it's quite sparkly!
The back shows the quilting a little better:

The holly leaves and berries is another design from Kathy Sandbach's Show Me How to Machine Quilt, a book I've referred to time and time again over the years.

I knew right away where I was going to take the outside picture, but I hadn't realized just how perfect a match Jude's Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus) would be!! 

We have one too, but hers is more spectacular.  Some of them around town are taller than I am, and 10 feet or more in circumference.  With the gale on the weekend, most of the big ones are pretty bare.

Wish the golds in the Maple(?) Oak(?) in the background showed up better

The back:

I finally watched the entire Sharon Schamber binding video Judy of Quilt Paradigm raves about.  It's worth every minute.  I watched, well, mostly listened, as I finished hand-stitching the binding down this morning.  I was clearly taught well:  I do just about everything just as she does, except for glue-basting and stitch (I use an appliqué stitch as opposed to Sharon's ladder stitch, but I'm going to try that on my next binding).

An in-the-shade shot so the colours aren't as washed out as in the sun:

I opted for the red inner frame.  I had tried Christmas green at first, but it didn't 'speak' to me, and, although the white looked great for a pop, it was almost too much of a pop...and moreover, this pillow is going to a little boy who ADORES red...  A little boy who loved Jude's inukshuk:

Heading back downstairs to sew up a couple of other items I'll be taking with me on my trip out West next week! Linking up with Lee of Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesdays.