The Four Cees

Circular Crochet Cushion Cover

I'm delighted to have finished this cushion cover which has been my knitting meetup and commuter "knitting" of choice lately.

In February we had a special Crochet night at our stitching group and this is what I chose to start. I knew all along from whenever I bought this Cascade 220 Paints yarn that I wanted to crochet with it because I wanted like colours to cluster together in splodges rather than the general hazy impressionist look I'd get when knitting with the yarn.
I bought this yarn from Eileen at mchattie@happyhills one evening last winter.

I'm happy enough with the way it turned out although I will have to learn that way of looping the yarn round your finger for your crochet start rather than doing a chain of six as I did here. I've been left with a visible tummy button as seen in picture four, but I'm thinking of hiding it with a crocheted button. I'm not taking it all apart again though just to fix on a button!

Now that it's finished it reminds me of those Flying Saucer sherbety sweets you get and it goes nicely with the Blue Monday Patchwork cushion I made a couple of years ago.

I took two attempts at side two because I had miscounted and ended up with a flouncy flary effect which I was trying to convince myself I could live with. In retrospect I am so glad I bit the bullet and frogged because how on earth could I have joined the two sides if one had all these superfluous stitches?

Although the yarn was not the softest to work with, it is absolutely fine for a household item and I must say it softened up a good bit in the wash.

Beginner's patchwork cushion

This is a hand-quilted patchwork cushion I've been making. Got it finished today because we were off work for a Bank Holiday.

During the Easter holidays I picked up a beginners' book about quilting in the Gem Shop, Castle Douglas, as well as a few Fat Quarters.
Yeah, like I needed more craft stuff in the house.

Although I didn't follow any pattern to the letter, it did inspire me to make this quilted cushion, or pillow as the book would have it.

I chose this layout and colour scheme because I liked it, but I've since found out that Alex Anderson, the author of my book, is pretty famous in the quilting domain and has her own quilting programme in the USA called "Simply Quilts" on HGTV. (My upload method just now won't let me do you a link, but that information should be enough to get you there.)

Anyway, I've been reading up on it and watching the video clips on the Simply Quilting site and found out that this is an analogous colour scheme, and an "Trip around the World" block setting. I've found the whole thing very interesting, and following some leads I have found out a hundred things about COLOUR THEORY, about which I was almost entirely ignorant before. Fascinating stuff.

Look out for some more patchwork and quilting from me in the future, but for now I leave you with this "Blue Monday", thanks DH, cushion.

The back is done with a 20" inch square of the "interest" fabric.
I had to fudge like there was no tomorrow because I forgot about the seam allowance.
I had to "make it work" because I had no fall-back fabric for the back of the cushion, but that meant stitching in part of the pattern for the patchwork squares on the front. Or should I say , shapes on the front, once I'd done my shaving they weren't squares anymore.

Not a particularly clear picture, but I am pleased at the way the zip insertion went.
I did this section by hand as I was working with varying widths of fabric (varying numbers of layers).

Trying out the layout of the pieces.
Sometimes I can see crafty things more objectively when I photograph them and appraise how they come over visually.