When siblings grow up

Today is a very special day for my sister - her 18th birthday! Obviously such an important birthday required a gift of some description, so after some deliberation my wife and I decided on making a big 'E' cushion, as that is her first initial. 

The first stage in actually making this vision a reality was buying a couple of bolster cushions, which we ended up getting from Dunelm Mill, and selecting some fabric. We'd decided that we wanted to make the faces and the sides of the cushion different fabrics, and decided to use some of the blue and white spotty fabric for the main fabric. There was therefore a trip to Hobbycraft to be had, and we ended up going on an excellent day - the cotton fabrics had all been reduced to £3 a metre, so we snapped up plenty of an amazing robot and alien fabric.

The next stage was working out a pattern, which I did based on using one whole bolster cushion for the left edge of the 'E' and cutting up the second one for the arms. I therefore measured out and created a paper 'E' shape.

Then it was time to make the 'E' cushion pad out of the two bolster cushions.

And then to cut out the fabric pieces that would make up the cushion cover.

Unfortunately, after cutting out all the fabric pieces, I realised that I'd made an error in the size of the 'E' piece. I'd made the gaps between the arms too large, so the first stage of the sewing up the cushion cover was to make the front and back pieces the correct size.

Next was to attach all the side pieces of the cushion cover, firstly to the front 'E' piece. 

And then attaching the second 'E' piece to those side sections. 

It was then time to put in the zip down the long edge on the left of the 'E' and to sew up each of the corner seams of the arms. 

So there you have it, one finished giant 'E' shaped cushion for one very special sister. She hasn't actually yet seen it as we have not travelled home since it has been finished, but I did send her a swatch of the robot and alien fabric which she loved! We'll be giving it to her next time we're back in Kent, and I'm hoping she'll love it.