For Lucy

Yesterday was my friend's birthday (the one who I make knitted dogs for!). I therefore decided to whip her up a little present, so after having an idea, went looking through my fabric stash to see what I could find. I'd decided to make a little hanging cushion with her name on, so just needed some relatively small pieces of fabric for each of the letters and a slightly larger piece for the back of the cushion.

I firstly looked for a larger sized piece of fabric, and found some left over from cutting up the bolster cushions for my sister's present (see here). I figured this would make a good-sized base and set about working out the layout of the name. To do this, I simply drew onto this piece of fabric with a pencil, intending to use this fabric as a base to appliqué on the letters. 

After doing this, I transferred the letters onto a piece of paper, and cut out each of the letters to give myself a template for cutting them out of their patterned fabrics. 

Each letter was then pinned onto the wrong side of each of the patterned fabrics I had picked, back to front, and then cut out so that they could be appliquéd onto the base fabric. 

Once cut out, each letter was pinned onto the base fabric, individually, and then I sewed around each using a zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine, until all four of the letters were sewn on.

The next stage was to actually make this into a hanging cushion, so I got out a second larger piece of fabric for the back of the cushion, and found some ribbon to hang it on. I trimmed around the letters to make a better shaped piece to work with, and cut the backing fabric to the same size, making sure to leave seam allowance. I then pinned the ribbon to the top of the 'L' and the 'y' to sew that into the seam, and then got sewing, leaving a gap at the bottom to turn my work through.

At this stage, I opened up the fabric behind the 'L' and the 'y' to stuff them individually with stuffing, making those letters more 3D, before turning the cushion cover through to the right side.

After turning the cushion cover through, I stuffed it, and hand stitched the bottom opening closed to have one finished cushion!

And there you have it, one personalised little hanging cushion - Happy Birthday Lucy!