Mammoth Embroidery Project

Inspired by my ‘Christmas-y craft weekend‘ with my cousin that I previously posted about, I decided to make a ginormous patchwork cushion for my cousin’s Christmas present. I had the cushion, a really lovely huge feather one that deserved a new home as I tended to avoid using it as its feathers but Ellie loved when she was up here. And I had a lot of fabric. I tried to suss out which of my fabrics she particularly liked when she was here – but wasn’t sure if I had remembered correctly afterwards… So I went with using essentially all my fabrics instead…

The project got a bit out of control. I hadn’t done any embroidery since primary school, and I enjoyed it so much I planned loads of different things to embroider as I went along. I wasn’t really sticking to a theme I just wanted CRAZY patches – no pattern, no matching just a massive explosion of patterns and colour. Now whilst it was November this was fine, but once I hit the second week of December and started laying the patches out together, I realised that it really was a huge cushion (90cm x 80cm-ish) and embroidery, whilst being very enjoyable and therapeutic, was pretty time consuming.

The dreams in my head of every inch of the cushion being covered in multicoloured embroidery alas were completely unreachable.

I have to admit there was a point where I started putting it together when a little voice suggested that maybe I had gone over board and it was starting to look a bit TOO crazy. But I was banking on whilst it may be too crazy for most of the population, my cousin is a kindred spirit, and would totally love it. I hoped.

Too Crazy?

I arrived back at my parents about a week before Christmas. I think my mum thought I would be free to help with the tidying and general Christmas presentation but alas… I had to sew. Constantly. I took it to my friends for our Christmas gatherings, I took it to the waiting room of the dentist, I did it all over the place. People continually suggested that maybe I didn’t have to do ALL the embroidery I had planned, or maybe I could do bigger patches towards the end… but i wanted it to be perfect!!!

I’m glad I stuck with it, I think it turned out very well, and it was certainly well received! 🙂

I mean there was the minor problem that I left the cushion itself behind when I drove down for Christmas so I had to just give the cushion cover with the promise of the cushion catching up in January, but seeing as it was the cover that was the real present I think that that was OK.  Cushion and cushion cover have now been reunited so I thought it was time I shared some pictures of the final creation:

Hope you enjoyed,

TTFN x