Three Of The Best: Cushions To Update Your Home

Three of the best this week brings me into the home. There's no quicker ticket to update your living room than a couple of new cushions to liven things up. There are so many good ones around, to suit whatever personality or style. Our sofas quite dark, so I like to lighten things up using throws and cushions. Plus it means I have a super comfortable sofa (even if Matt hates my multiple cushion palaver).

What's my personal cushion sitch? I have a few different ones - that I rotate around the house. And every so often, I bring a different one home to join the roost. And sometimes I evict them and pass them on to someone else. 

My Bearded Pigeon Antarctica Cushion $55 (cover only): These beautiful organic cotton cushion covers remind me of beautiful watercolours. They make a statement - and with such a great selection of places - you can pretty well choose where you want your cushion to be! It's like GPS for your couch - except you're going nowhere fast, except reaching for the remote. 

Freedom Pops cushion $19.95: We all know my well-documented love of spots and polka dots. It's enduring love. It knows no bounds. And these cushions feel good in hand, and are ridiculously well priced, so you can mix and match colours and have some fun! 

Adairs Mercer + Reid Indigo Dip Dye Cushion $39.95: Shibori is so hot right now, and I've always had a weakness for indigo, so I love this cushion - and can't imagine it ever going out of fashion. You could pile it up with a bunch of other blues, or make it pop with some yellow - can you imagine?!

Also check these out:

- Emerald - Pantone's colour of the year - this cushion is a jewel

- I just absolutely adore this - save the travel expenses and bring the Swiss Alps home

- I am really, really bananas about this cushion! 

Would They Notice?

Once we finally offload Nibbles de Boing Boing, do you think the kids would notice if I swapped him for this?

via the ever lustworthy Kido Store

Stuff That

Here's a little something I've been working on for le husbande. He keeps using our couch cushions in bed for reading. I keep taking them back. He keeps taking them. And that's how the story goes folks. So in the interests of non-family warring, I'm making him a cush. Because you know how I like cush's. The centre is a vintage napkin I found at a church sale, onceuponatime.

Hopefully later this week I will take it over to my sister and she can put the back on upside down again.

Scrap Dancing

While I've been telling you I haven't found any discarded goodness recently, I've realised I have unwittingly lied. I have found discarded goodness of another kind.

Recently, while visiting a fabric shop, I discovered a garbage bin full of scrap fabric. Just strips. Tossed away without a second thought.

By now you should absolutely know that I know no shame. Waste not want not, right?! So I dutifully retrieved all the decent sized strips and even some smaller ones. And I've been adding them to the Doctor's cushion which is slowly, slowly, ever so slowly coming together. See here?

The smaller scraps are for the Doctor's crafting. To stick on cards. Or wherever he wants.

Now I can stop whining about not finding any garbage. Here ends my blog for today.

Birthdays On The Rise

Matt's birthday is in just nine sleeps. Egads. I am not even close to being organised. I hate last minute birthday shopping. I like to get things months in advance so that I have time to forget what I've bought. I love choosing things that I think the recipient will lurve. But yikes. Matt's birthday. I had good intentions. Such good intentions.

I was going to make him a cushion (apparently it's all about the cushion for me at the moment, but what else can you make a man when you're a novice stitcher?!). I'd better get my skates on and start a-stitching otherwise this cushion train is about to depart. Initially I had thought I'd use some of the doilies I bought, but then I took a long hard look at myself and thought - what type of man wants a doily cushion? Probably not my man is the answer to that one folks. Matt + doilies is a little bit weird methinks. But Matt plus linen and stitching = ace of base.

Luckily for me, one of my good friends gave me this gorgeous Japanese embroidery book yesterday. Jam packed full of beautiful images and ideas. I would be hard-pressed to walk away from this book unenthused for embroidery. So this weekend imagine me stitching in secret. Commando rolling while couching, it's going to be a hard task, but I think I'm up to it. If all else fails it will just have to be one of those un-secret birthday presents.

Merci Beaucoup - From Me To You

Hey Gang!

Thanks for the confidence boost yesterday. It made me realise that sewing shouldn't be about symmetry, but sewing for the fun, for the creation, and for the experience.

So while I didn't resume sewing yesterday, I was still a little tainted by the whole evening, I did think more about my objective. Today, I just thought - heck, both smalls are a-sleeping, I'm going to throw caution to the wind and get into it.

I finally decided on a sort of (very, very) vague 'log cabin'. Now don't get your knickers in a knot, I know it's not traditional stylie. Nor do I even suggest you can see this interpretation. It's just going to be a little hotch-potch pulled together cushion. I'm not terribly good at the construction part (or any part to be honest), but it's my first one and I'm flying solo. However, my favourite cheer squad leader has been telling me 'you're doing great sewing Mummy', and 'you're sewing really fast, aren't you Mama?'. I mean, who wouldn't want to make something for someone who encourages you with such positive affirmations? I could be convinced to make him anything if he keeps that up. Even a Percy cushion.

PottyMouthMama of The Symmetrical Sewing

I had grand plans for sewing class last night. Grand plans. I thought I'd be coming back here today and showing you at least the front of my cushion for the Doctor.

Instead I came home early and ate cake.

It all started when I turned up with my fabric, and my idea in my head. It's a no-brainer for me. I have the idea, I just don't have the expertise to execute it. But given my sewing teacher's wealth of knowledge, I thought we'd whizz up the cush in under no time.

She pulled out her special folder of pattern ideas. Here's where I should have seen trouble. Trouble with a capital T. Maybe even underlined. There was nothing in this folder that replicated even closely what I had in my head.

I got a piece of paper, drew what she was proposing and realised it definitely wasn't compatible with what I wanted. So when she went away, I started cutting, and as I cut I fiddled around with the layout. I spent quite a hefty amount of time moving things around. Everyone else was a little concerned that I hadn't done anything except move fabric around - but you know peeps, it ain't a competition, and I'm just here to do my own thing.

So I finally got to a layout I started to like. My sewing teacher was on the approach. Her deft hands swiftly rearranged the entire layout, while telling me that "unless it was symmetrical it wasn't going to work". Dots in the corners. Animal prints in the middle. Block colours to break it up. Here's me having a nervous breakdown of sorts.

I'm not assertive. Gosh, I know I need to learn to be, but sometimes I don't want to offend. So in my gentle way, I tried to back out from this arrangement with an - 'I've left some of my fabrics at home so maybe I'll just wait 'til next week to go further'.

Would she have a bar of it? Uh uh.

She started pulling fabrics out of her stash to go with mine. These included a hideous egg yolk yellow that made my head hurt. Some other random bits. And a block of Percy the engine.

I knew someone small (ie the Doctor) would LOVE that block. But really, it wasn't working with the aesthetic I had in mind. I have saved all my bits of fabric. My Japanese buys. My naughty little purchases. I've saved them for something special. Percy - sorry - but it wasn't working. My sewing teacher was shocked.

It was at this point I realised what I needed.

Cake. (And more to the point Stephanie Alexander's Orange cake. Who knew 250g of butter and 1.5 cups of caster sugar could taste so darn good? Ok I did.)

I packed up, feigned tiredness and left. In a jiffy. Before any more of my fabrics could be tainted with Percy-ness. So this is what I have done. Or rather, haven't done. Cut up some fabric. Ta-dah!

Just like Cinderella, I wish a Fairy Godmother would come and tap her magic wand over my head and make me a stellar seamstress. A supreme stitcher. Or maybe I could just dive in and remember, it's just fabric, innit?