Ginkgos and geckos

There must be a warp in the time space continuum of my life because I can hardly believe that it is nearing the end of June.  Despite reducing my expectations for what I want to accomplish this summer, I suspect I need to reduce my list even further.  But I have finished a pillow.  After getting the squares stitched down I decided on a palette of threads to embellish the pillow.
Here is the final pillow all sewn up, but without the pillow form inside so you can see the squares.  It is not heavily embellished since it must cater to all the tastes of the household.  DD the younger doesn't like it, but she may just be trying to bug me.  I carried the ginkgo leaf theme to the middle left burgundy square.
I was really pleased with the way the burgundy outline worked on gold in the corners
Because I mixed up ginkgo and gecko one time while trying to explain the design, I decided a gecko should go in the plain square, but then it needed some background so I used more ginkgo leaves.
As it turned out, the pillow was too small and the colour not quite right for the couch it was meant for, but it looks perfect in one of our chairs.  Of course, I make the girls take the pillow off the chair before they sit in it.
Here is our collection of baby geckos by the way - Baby 1, 2a, 2b, 3a, and 3b.  Clutches 4 and 5 are in the incubator and we will soon find out if New Caledonian crested gecko females can store sperm!

Just when I thought I had decided

I have a bit of a break from going into the city for work this week because of school exam schedules and early release.  So I'm puttering around the house doing all sorts of things.  Today I decided to reduce my stash of fabric by actually making something.  I mentioned to DH a while back that I should make pillows for the couch because it might detract from the dingy old couch - it is over 17 years old but it is still sturdy and it is a sofa bed.  I'm not quite ready to try my hand at recovering the couch, but colourful pillows I can handle.

So today I pulled together a pile of fabric that seemed to go with the living room and started a pillow.  I decided to use some green velvet from old curtains as the base for the front and also the back of the pillows.  So after some playing around I came up with this.

With the help of DD the elder, we decided that the greenish pieces in the middle of the top and bottom would help tie things to the back fabric.  But then I decided that I really liked the side pieces and tried it with all four center squares the same, but with a brown back.

I really like this one!  I like the original as well, but I love the burgundy and gold batik fabric so much that I think I'll stick with the second colourway.  Of course that means I've totally covered the green velvet, but maybe it will survive in the second pillow.

The ginkgo leaf piece in the center is a mystery to me.  I purchased a huge stack of fabric squares at my EGA guild silent auction last year so DD the younger had some interesting things to quilt with.  Well, since that hasn't happened yet, I went through the stack and found the gold leaves.  So I can't tell you anything about how it was made.  But it is really nice.