As Easy as it Looks

It's been cold here. Every time I turn on the news I hear about how cold it is in Florida and how unusual that kind of extreme cold is. Well, it has been cold like that here, except we're not getting nearly as much coverage.
This unusual drop in temperatures prompted us to bring out a little something extra to make sitting in our newly painted living room, complete with now-filled aquarium(though no fish yet) more pleasant.



You might remember this quilt from the post that featured it on my daughter's bed and..oh...the cover of my book. Now it's gracing the couch along with a new pillow or two and it looks good there. So good that I'm not returning it to my middle's bed even though the thermometer isn't dipping quite so low.
Actually, seeing the quilt on the couch and, more importantly, cuddling underneath it, reminded me that I still had a few leftover blocks from the quilt's initial making.
It took a while to find them and there were only three, so I decided a fourth block was needed.



I've thought about the "rejected" block off and on since I made the quilt and came up with several ideas of how to incorporate them into something else. But these plans were rejected as well. It took seeing the finished quilt laid out to realize that the best solution was also the simplest.



I quilted the pillow top in the same pattern I used for the quilt and then selected the backing fabric.




It was only after I'd started attaching the zipper to the backing that it dawned on me that the pattern in the fabric mimicked the quilting pattern on the pillow top. All the parts just seemed to fit together easily.
I wish I could figure out how to make that happen all the time.