Seaside Themed Cushions

“Where shall we Adventure?” by Helen of Bustle and Sew

Having made my Seagull Cushion I had enough of the ticking style fabric left to make another one.  I did consider doing a mirror image Seagull, but when I saw Helen’s embroidered picture “Where shall we Adventure?” I decided I could use that instead.  Again it is a mixture of applique, free-motion machine embroidery and hand embroidery.  I had already printed the poem “I must go down to the sea again” on the same sheet of linen as the Seagull’s song, ready to use, so I just had to buy and download the pdf pattern.

Helen includes a scaled down picture in the download as well as the full-sized one, and I decided I could use the smaller one as it would fit in the middle of the cushion in the same way as the seagull panel did.  I traced it onto some natural linen (Robert Kaufman Essex) using my lightbox and a Frixion pen.  I carefully traced all the sails onto Bondaweb and spent some time picking out my fabrics, fusing and cutting them out ready to attach.  Then I realised I couldn’t use the iron to fuse them on as it would erase my drawing! (Mind you, if I had traced it with a water soluble pen the iron would have set the ink so that would have been awkward too.)  In the end I used the very tip of the iron on the centre of each sail and managed not to erase any lines!

Once again I enjoyed the free-motion machine stitching, followed by some more hand embroidery. However, when it came to doing the waves I balked, as I’m not overly fond of satin stitch.  I decided that as I had done a scaled down picture, I would do some scaled down  waves, and did them with stem stitch instead.  I couldn’t decide which colours to use, so I used 4 different ones.  I did embellish it a little by adding some white french knots to be sea spray and backwash.  I noticed one of the other examples on Helen’s Flickr Group Page had added a pirate flag on the third mast!

To reinforce the embroidery I fused some woven interfacing to the back (Vilene G700, like Pellon SF101) leaving the edge free to fray a little.  I didn’t have any more of that nice hair canvas to use as sew-in interfacing but I had some heavy cotton curtain fabric so I’ve used some of that instead.  I used some temporary adhesive spray to fix the embroidered panel and printed poem in place, and then machined them on with invisible thread.  In order to finish it in a similar style to the seagull, I hand embroidered the panel with blanket stitch again, but with blue wool this time.

That just left assembling the cushion cover, which is a simple envelope style.  All done, and I think it’s very effective.  That’s Dad’s presents all sewn up!  I can certainly recommend Helen’s designs.