…how does your garden grow? Better than mine I hope. Winter seems to be never ending this year. We’ve had glimpses of Spring, little teasers just to whet the appetitie and give us hope and then the winter returns with a bang. And so my garden remains untended and bare. Perhaps this is for the best as I fear whatever planting I will do when Spring finally arrives may not survive the attention of my two little boys.

 

However, while I may not be able to get my outdoor garden growing I reckoned that there was absolutely no reason that I could not create a little garden of colour. I pulled some recently purchased scrap bags of Sunkissed by Sweetwarer for Moda from my fabric stash and set to work. A little bit of crazy quilting on some octagonal fabric bases resulted in the creating on three colourful flowers. These I backed in some lightweight cotton and then I must admit that I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to use them. And so they sat on the corner of my sewing table for a couple of weeks while a few other projects nade their way through my machine.

Finally I decided I would make a cushion, and that I would keep the design simple. So I grabbed some cream cotton and batting and set up my quilt sandwich. I used some of the green fabrics from the collection to add some leaves to my design, and with the hlep of my trusty vanishing fabric pen I quickly sketched out the layout and design of my cushion front late one night.

There followed a flurry of stitching. First there were the stems, then the leaves were raw edge appliquéd in place. The flowers followed, first attached with some fusing fabric and then stitched in place. Because of their bulk they needed the stitching to attach them firmly, but this also served to add a little more quilting to the cushion. The design was finished with a single butterfly hand quilted between the flowers.

To finish the cushion I decided I would try something a little different to my usual buttoned envelope back and bound edges. Katie over at Sew Katie Did has a wonderful tutorial on how to add an invisible zip to a pillow and I decided I would give this a try. Of course I first needed a back for my cushion. Rather than just opt for a plain or contrasting fabric layer I choose to make up a second quilted panel and make the cushion reversible. As the cushion is to be a belated Mother’s Day gift for when we go home for a visit over Easter I decided that the back should be all about Easter. So I pulled the fabrics back out, pieced together and embelished a bundle of eggs and after some creative scattering and frequent rearranging I finally settled on a suitable arrangment and fixed them in place with more raw edge appliqué.

Spring popped back once more with a bit of warmth and sunshine to show off the finished cushion. It did not stay, but I am sure it will be back again soon. In the meantime there are more colourful Easter eggs on the way.

5 thoughts on “Mary, Mary, quite contrary….

  1. Hello: I found your site through Stitched in color and I LOVE it!These flowers are sensational? And the eggs are to die for. Do you have a tutorial on the flowers. Are they paper pieced. I have been trying to figure them out…THank YOU!
    Cat
    cgoldie123@aol.com

  2. I’m working on a tutorial for the flowers at the moment so I’ll hopfully have that up in the next week.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.