How to Make an Applique Cushion

As mother to two energetic beasts, half-term is always daunting, but we're on day two and I haven't buried either of them in the garden yet, so it's going quite well.  In fact the half-term is acting like a sort of stasis week between the leaving of the the real job and the beginning of the Adventure, so it's remarkably welcome this time, in a few more days it's all going to start to feel very real.

On the living in a more sustainable (aka 'cheap') way, Mr.Steel&Stitch dragged us shopping at the weekend (he LOVES it, true story) and was coveting a cushion.  This cushion was £45 whole pounds, and had an applique badger on it with some lovely hand stitching.  It was a very nice cushion, but all I could think was 'I could make that!'  So I frogmarched him home and set about raiding the craft stash to see what we had to make something similar.

This is the result - no, it's not a badger, but it is our cat, Treacle - it literally cost nothing as it's made from bits that have been hoarded, and I used two slightly rubbish cushions squashed together to make one, much fatter, much better cushion.  You can make it too!

1. Cut two pieces of fabric for the front and back of your cushion

 2. Draw a template of your creatures face - draw round the whole thing and cut the base piece out.  Then cut the elements like the mask and eyes out and layer them on the base.

 3. Pin all the pieces in place and stitch to main cushion fabric.

 4. Stitch front and back together, insert cushion and finish sewing up edges.  I finished this off with a blanket stitch in gold thread around the edge.

The only thing spent was an evening of extremely satisfying craft goodness.