Patchwork Cushions with Hand Quilting

Some of you that follow me on Flickr may have seen this image around the beginning of October and then nothing more of it, worry not my exploits into hand quilting cushions went well! I just didn't have the chance to get any more photos taken until this week :)

That super bright perle cotton toned in really well with the bright florals but just to make sure it wasn't too bold I went with a cream to stitch the horizontal lines.

The binding is my new favourite grey with white spots.

I didn't know I had this many floral or ditzy prints in my stash truth be told but I had fun throwing them all together!

And I had to go with another floral fabric for the backing because it was sitting there just looking so right for it! 

It ended up sized for a  22"x22" cushion pad.

Once that one was done I was itching to do another (I did mention in an older post these things are addictive to make!) 

 So this was whipped together 

I pulled a load of animal theme fabrics and two types of quilters linen, sorry I can't remember the shade names right now but I'll go hunt them out if anyone is desperate to know, and set to marking out a quilting grid.

I've quilted each linen square with a different colour thread to try and pick out some of the colours in the animal fabrics.

Yup again with that grey with white dots! I really do love it as a binding :)

The back is a really bright fox fabric from Ikea that I had a small amount of, it only seemed right after hearing Madam play "That fox song" over and over again for the last few days! 

I'm coming to realise I do get a kick out of patchworking with squares. 

One of my 1st quilt books- a birthday gift from Him in door's mum The gentle art of quilt making by Jane Brocket keeps re-inspiring me to work with the colours of the fabric and the simple shapes I can create to make items that will stand the test of time and my ever changing tastes. I have to say it's been a bit of a shock and revelation as one glance through my Flickr faves will leave you thinking EPP is the way I roll lol I highly recommend the book or having a good browse with the "Look inside" feature of Amazon to get a feel for taking quilts back to simple shapes and colour palettes. Anyway enough waffling on here is the last cushion cover I put together for the heck of it :D

I had a load of Liberty scraps left after making our giant log cabin quilt top and figured it would be rude to let them go to waste!

 I machine quilted on the diagonal through the prints and hand stitched through the linen, again with perle 8 (I like the chunky look it gives) 

I went with a floral binding for this one!

Really simple linen envelope backing to finish, I thought I'd better calm it down after the fox fabric! 

All three of these will be making their way into the shop today...possibly tomorrow after seeing the time!