beautiful square feet: Make do and mend: personalised cushion.

Now, what I should be showing you tonight is the pictures of Astrid's party - I want to show you what I did with a whole lot of paper and a small branch. But, I've just realised that would involve searching through and editing all the pictures that were taken at the party and I haven't done that yet (and don't have time tonight, sorry). I'll aim to get them ready to show you before the week is out!

So, to this post - making a personalised cushion.

I managed to grab some time to make some gifts just before Christmas and I even remembered to take some snaps of some of them so I could share them with you.

Up first, is a personalised cushion that I made for our niece, Harriet. Her bedroom is neutral but with tasteful, brightly coloured accessories and so I wanted to give her a cushion that mirrored that. As I don't possess a sewing machine, I chose to use a shop-bought cushion cover and then embellished it myself.

Like most of my crafts, it was really easy to make - I think it took me three evenings to make it (well, the time left after re-settling two children!). I used:

chartreuse cushion cover from Dunelm Mill
pink toile de jouy fabric from Laura Ashley
empty cereal packet
pencil
ruler
decent scissors (I have to confess I used our kitchen scissors, as I don't have any fabric scissors)
pins
white cotton thread

What I should have also used:

thimble (ouch!)

I began by drawing an H on the empty cereal packet using the pencil and ruler. When I was happy with the dimensions, I cut it out and used it as a template to draw an H onto the toile de jouy fabric.

Next, I removed the cushion pad, positioned the fabric and then pinned the H to the green cushion cover. I then sewed around the edge of the H using a very simple straight edging stitch. Please excuse the total amateur nature of the following stitching, but if you're not a perfectionist, here is a close up showing how I finished the edges of the H.