Just Have To Post This Now!

I have to post again as I have to put up the cushion!  I managed to finish it this morning while baby was sleeping!  It actually looks pretty good!  I did have to laugh though as when I showed BJ his new cushion he told me he would like one with penguins next!  Oh ok, I will have to see what I can do another day.  However, we do have some really nice fabric at work with penguins on it!  

This is a fairly new range of fabric that came into work & I thought the blue & red were perfect for the Union Jack.  I got the pattern in one of those many million of magazines you can get these days in packs of 2 or 3.  Mostly there isn't anything you want in any of them but I had to buy this pack as I wanted the cushion!  It was in Handmade Gift Giving Vol 29 no 9.  It was designed by Jenny from Elefantz.  She has other Union Jack cushions on her blog.  I should have found those first as the mag pattern had a little error, but I managed to work with it.  

The blue, red & backing vehicle fabric are from the range Ready Go! by Richard Neuman for Clothworks.  It's a really nice boy range of fabric.  The white is an Alexander Henry spot from a range a couple of years back.  Worked quite well.  It was certainly a test of my sewing.  I haven't really sewn much like it for a while.  I even made friends with the automatic button holer!  Stu said that you just blanket stitch & then cut it don't you?  Well yeah, but you use this gadget to do it!  lol  So I did lots of practice with the button holer first as it was a rather long time since I had used it.  At least when I did, I made notes in the instruction book which was handy.  Love that gadget.  It's my new favourite friend as BJ would say in reference to something that he likes now.  I also got to make use of my Oma's buttons tins.  I found 3 great buttons for it there, so a bit of history too, even though BJ doesn't know my Oma from long ago.

I thought I was being clever doing piping for the edge too.  I have never done piping before but this really cool stuff we have at work was something I really had to make use of for this.  Have you seen it before?  It's iron on piping!   The rope/cord is covered in a piece of stuff like your iron on interfacing.  So you just cut a strip of fabric, sew enough together for the length you need to go around whatever & then you iron the fabric over & hey presto!   You have the fiddly bit done & you just have to pin that between your back & front pieces & you sew around the perimeter & you are done!  Too easy!  I was a bit nervous about it & thought I should have got some tips from the other ladies at work who have used it.  I will now anyway to see what I could have done differently.  But it worked out well really, even sewing around the corners.

So that's another little project done!  So cool!  Now I have just put DJ to bed again & I have got out my next project!  Yay for nap time & yay for the fact that I am actually home making use of it for a change!