le challenge - nature

I really can't believe a month has gone past since the last le challenge. It has flown past really quickly with not much time for either blogging or sewing. I made a big effort though and I have completed this month's entry.

I have been feeling I wanted to do a little embroidery recently so "nature" seemed the perfect opportunity to practise my daisy and chain stitch. I used a strip of white kona cotton and some cheap and cheerful embroidery threads given to me by a friend, Marion. I believe the embroidery threads are from Tesco of all places! At first I thought of stitching the daisies round in a spiral with some text but decided to do a panel with no texting. There have been some lovely cushions recently in blogland, just simple squares but with a unifying theme, so these helped to form the design in my mind.

Design? Who am I kidding? I laid out all the bits of fabric on the kitchen worktop and shuffled them around until they sort of balanced. I had a couple of bright greens but the design consultant of the house suggested I kept to muted tones, and he was right. I was anxious to use the little gnome. I accidentally bought a metre of this instead of a half, and I am determined to use them gnome by gnome. I thought a whole strip of gnomes may be a bit much. Most of the other fabrics were squares from the low value swap organised by Rachael and her Floral Suitcase last year.

For the first time I quilted the front of the cushion, I like my cushions squishy, not too stiff. This is for a friend for her birthday and I wanted the cushion to be squishy enough to push in at your back.. I thought long and hard on what to back it with and decided on brown. Now, I know brown is yucky but this will be used in the garden and brown is great for hiding the dirt/soil/leaves/green stuff that gets on your garden furniture. I also have metres and metres of the stuff. I bought it for backing my maple leaf quilt some 15 years and ago and have never used it. Said maple leaf quilt was originally going to be this month's entry, but realistically if it has taken me 15 years to get this far, it was never going to be finished this month.





yes of course there is enough brown to back it

Le Challenge is on the 15th and my friend's birthday is on the 18th. I hope she enjoys sitting in her newly landscaped garden, reading, drinking tea and resting her back/derriere on her new cushion.