Cushion love

Morning all, well we've made it to Spring time at last, with yesterdays Equinox. With one thing and another this week has been quite a difficult one for me. So this post is going to be a 'here's something I've made earlier' kind of affair.

I'm still slowly plodding on with the knitting that will be the background covering for my Spring time wreath I'm only about half way through, what seems like never ending rows of stocking stitch, which is not very exciting to blog about. So today if you don't mind indulging me I thought I would share with you, my love of cushions.

I don't know what it is, I just can't help myself, I have so many dotted around the place. In fact I soon  may have to seek help, or I may well find myself buried under a huge pile of them. But still I'll see one in a shop or a pattern in a magazine and I'll know I just have to have another one.

These are cushions that are in the summerhouse, obviously they are not all out at once, I dug a lot  out of the blanket box some I rotate in summer time and in the winter the futon has a burgundy chenille throw that the darker one match, some are old ones, ok  no excuses I'll admit that's a lot of cushions. eek.

This confession will not come as a surprise to my friends and family who are well aware of my cushion addiction, in fact right now as I'm typing this I can hear my sister saying 'but do you really need another cushion', to which the obvious answer is always YES! There must be others like me, I can't be the only one with a cushion compulsion?

As you may know I'm in the midst of knitting a leaf cushion, which you can read all about it here . For the last few weeks it's been sitting patiently in my stripey beach bag while I been concentrating on completing my spring time wreath, but today I thought I'd share with you some other cushions I've made.

 The first cushion  was knitted using Moss stitch, which is one of my favourite stitches, this pattern like the leaf cushion was found amongst the pages of my mum's Women's Weekly magazine. At that time I was very new to knitting and  as it was listed as a easy make I knew it was the cushion for me. It's made using Rico Creative Fliz yarn, which is pure joy to knit, on oh so chunky 8 mm needles. The perfect make for my first ever cushion.

I wasn't quite up to making the button holes, I'm not quite sure why they kept going wrong, as I find it so easy to make a giant hole in my knitting, when I don't need too, so I did cheated a little bit, by using some large pop studs. Then all I had to do was sew the buttons onto the cushion, I used some lovely big shell buttons which I adore, I suppose I should also confess that I have bit of a button and ribbon addictions too, since today seems to be the day for confessions. Here it is in the above pic looking little bit more lived in.

The other cushion I'm going to tell you about today is made with this lovely stuff, oh the wonderful colour of it. I made this cushion as a secret Santa gift, for a creative group I'm a member of on Facebook. I'm normally not a huge fan of synthetic yarns preferring the real stuff if you know what I mean but I couldn't resist the colours and waviness of this magical scarf yarn.

I originally bought several balls of this yarn when it first came out a few years ago and made scarf's for some friends as Christmas gifts.  At the time I thought it would make a wonderful cushion and squirrelled away the left over yarn ends in my stash box with the intention that one day I would attempt to make a cushion.

So the Secret Santa gave me the perfect opportunity to try and make a cushion from this yarn. I bought a small cushion pad and basically just knitted to the size of that. I luckily had just the right amount of yarn to make the front of the cushion, so it was meant to be. I knitted it as per the band instructions on 8mm needles, in places underneath the wavy yarn the white of the cushion pad showed through, so I lined the front of the cushion with a piece if purple linen. I then knitted a simple back for the cushion in garter stitch using Hayfields bonus aran in a matching purple and Ta Dah this is how it turned out.

I'm so pleased to see that it worked as a cushion and hoped very much that the person I made it for also liked it's colour and frilly waviness, just as much as I do and luckily I think she did :0)

As for me and future cushion creations, well I have my eye on a pattern for a crocheted ripple cushion. Maybe I'll make it with the left over crocheted flower yarn. I'm sure it will be a challenge as I've never attempted a crochet cushion before.

Happy yarning

Clare x