I’ve had the idea of making an appliqué lettered cushion brewing for a while. In fact, ever since I made my stall sign way back.
Having just downloaded a few lovely new fonts, it was just the kick up the bum I needed to give it a go.
I also decided to dust down my piping skills.
I don’t like piping. By which I mean, I love the look of piping, but I don’t like actually doing it.
It’s a bit fiddly, takes ages, uses a surprisingly large quantity of fabric, and often I can’t get it to look exactly as perfect as I’d like.
Plus it can make getting a zip in neatly a bit of a bother, if you’re not careful.
But I decided it was necessary in this case. So I took a deep breath and tackled it on the new sewing machine.
And actually, once I’d worked out how to move the needle over to one side (not at all obvious in the machine’s manual and the cause of a bit of a tantrum) it didn’t go too badly!
I only had to refer to this useful Craftsy tutorial once, to remind me how to finish the ends off. Which I usually mess up, but this time got right.
The background fabric is a change from my usual white. I fancied something a bit less stark, and worried that if I used white it would look more like a bed pillow than a cushion for a chair or sofa.
So I used some Timeless Treasures Sketch fabric, which has a subtle pale grey crosshatch pattern…
The lettering is, of course, vintage. A lovely bit of 1960s Dekoplus fabric, to be precise.
Anyway, once I’d finished it and taken the photos in what was left of the afternoon’s fading light, I thought it was missing something…
And then it came to me. A quick rummage in the haberdashery stash and…
nimble fingers – nice!
Sweet! Or should I say, nice! Do you use a cutting machine for your alpha? I bought fabric to make a name pillow for my girl a while ago…still haven’t gotten around to it.
All the lettering is cut by hand Erica. I looked at machines but they are expensive and the choice of fonts is very limited.
Wow, amazing cutting job then! I have a silhouette cameo machine (which can do any font as it’s computer-based) but I haven’t used it for fabric yet. I’ll have to try it out. But definitely not worth the price unless you’re going to get a lot of use out of it…
Lucky you! I print out the words on paper, then use them as a template. A bit time consuming, but my new machine’s lovely pivot feature has saved loads of time on the actual sewing.
The piping was definietly worth it. I like how you’ve picked out the orange from your fabric.
Every detail of this comes together perfectly! It’s snazzy-looking to the extreme!
Love it! – great font too.
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