The Mousa Cushion

In the redecoration of our lounge we decided to incorporate a unit in the  under stairs area. Our  expert local carpenter, who likes a challenge, exceeded our expectations with the unit he came up with. We have purchased some firm foam for the seat. I made an undercover for this from white curtain lining ( from the stash!). This also  gave me a trial run for the actual cover.  The following morning I decided  the undercover was too wrinkly and needed tightening. Hand stitching enabled me to get a really neat tight finish. So the planning and trial meant that making the actual linen based cover went well with no re-doing! 

Then it was time to provide the seat with lots of cushions. We bought a lovely avocet  one from John Lewis- avocets are my favourite bird, Cley bird reserve being a good place to see them. 

 

But wherever we looked we couldn't find any more suitable ( to me) cushions. I thus decided that the only way to have a set of cushions  that I liked was to make them. 

So for the first of a series of cushions. 

The front has been cut from a Mousa tee shirt that we bought for DH when in Shetland. We went on the Mousa boat one evening on a summer visit to be there for midnight and experience the storm petrels coming back to the broch. It was an experience we really enjoyed and will never forget and recommend it if you get a chance to do this too. 

The tee shirt had never been worn and if I could use this as a cushion front we could see it everyday and be reminded of Mousa. I backed the teeshirt material with iron on interfacing to stabilise it. I didn't really want to use the black Teeshirt fabric for the reverse of the cushion. 

 

On searching through my stash I noticed that there was sufficient fabric to use from the bridesmaid dress from our wedding ( 1974!). This was just the blue used in the Mousa artwork on the Teeshirt. The fabric was fine stripy satin and embroidered lawn, so I backed this also with iron on interfacing. At this stage the cushion looked good but incomplete.

 I decided it needed an edging in blue to also pick up the blue from the print. So, this time looking in my yarn stash I came up with some variegated fibre that looked promising. I made i-cord with the help of the knitting machine and then hand stitched it round the edge to complete the cushion. ( Apologies it was very hard to get a good image, it is square - honest!)

 

I love this and am pleased that we have such a personal cushion with nice memories. 

Now to make the next cushion. This one is already started ! It has a lot of hand embroidery, but like the first one it tells a personal story. It will take some time to complete, perhaps for the third cushion I will try some machine embroidery!