Lovely Ellie Applique Mini Cushion

Sew Hip Issue 26

With the Christmas post taking ages, it seems like I only just read the last Sew Hip and now the next one is here!

So, for my make of the month, I might have cheated slightly by turning Helen Dickson's Lovely Ellie Applique cushion featuring nine elephants into to a mini cushion featuring just the one elephant. There is a good reason for this apart from just laziness, though. A full sized cushion takes up a fair bit of room in the house and I already have quite  lot of cushions that I've bought or made. Hence, a teeny version seemed  like a time and space saving option.

A small sample of my cushion collection

For the front of the cushion, I used some lilac cotton drill I had in stash. The elephant's body is cut from a fat quarter of lovely purple fabric my mum put in my Christmas haberdashery box and I used a piece of lilac craft felt from my scraps bag for the ear. The elephant is simply appliqued to the front of the cushion using three strands of contrasting embroidery thread. Projects often have you gluing or using basting spray on applique but I tend to just pin the shape on and sew round, although I try to keep the stitches close together when using cotton to avoid fraying.

For the back of the cushion, I used some pretty cotton lawn from the Fent Shop in Skipton. I sewed the cushion together on my sewing machine, leaving a gap for turning. To stuff the cushion, I combined lavender and toy stuffing and then hand sewed the gap closed.

In the project in the magazine, two of the nine elephants were facing each other with a felt heart between them. I'm afraid my elephant is lonely but I did find a pre-cut felt heart to glue on its bottom.

The finished size is a modest 6" square. Cute, delightfully fragranced and I won't have my husband asking me where I'm going to put it...

Melx