Monday 14 November 2011

17:15 hours and still no blind kits - but 2 new cushions

I was really hoping my blind kits would turn up first thing this morning so that I could get going on the last bit of work I need to do - but the gods were not looking down favourably on me today, and I got a text saying they estimated my delivery to arrive between 16:00 - 19:00 hrs.

With my plans scuppered, I decided it was time to first tidy up my sewing room before I started anything else.  Sadly this took me much longer than anticipated and I didn't finish until midday.

My creative juices were flowing today and I wanted to make some cushions for the lounge out of the blind fabric, but I didn't want just striped cushions.  First I made up some more bias binding using the continuous bias binding method again to use on the cushions.

The first cushion I made incorporated some machine patchwork.  I took a 6" square of my striped fabric, cut it diagonally corner to corner to create 4 triangles, I then went top to bottom and left to right to make the triangles even smaller (I am sure there is a name for this in the patchwork quilting world but I am not sure what it is called).


I rearranged the triangles to create what I thought was a pleasing shape and sewed them together to create a strip.  I took my striped fabric and sewed a larger piece to the right and a smaller piece to the left giving me the square of my cushion.  Next stage was to stitch the corded piping to the front of the cushion-front clipping the piping with a V  at each corner to persuade the piping to turn neatly.  For the back of my cushions I used velcro tape but you could use a zip if you prefer.    Right sides together, stitch the cushion front and back together.  I used my zipper foot for this to get as close as I can to the piping.

I didn't want all my cushions to look the same so I needed to think of something different for the next cushion.  For this one I cut a few strips of the striped fabric and stitched them together, staggering the colours to create a chequerboard effect.  I then cut 4 strips of the gold stripe and created a boarder for the chequerboard.

I cut out my two squares of fabric for the cushion size and duplicated the back for the velcro closure.  I wanted to overlay the chequerboard over the middle of the cushion front, but rather than mess around turning my edges under, I used a very light-weight lining fabric and stitched 3 of the sides, right-sides together, turned and pressed, leaving only one side left to press under.  I chose to hand stitch the chequerboard to the cushion front.  Once this was completed, I still wanted to do something else, so thought some embroidery would look nice.  I found a thread to match the blue and the gold and created this.


So the question I am asking myself is do I make a 3rd cushion.

More later............


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