With yesterday’s headache behind me I today I set about a bit of simple embroidery of four eyes and two smiles. Facial features in place, I sat at my bedroom table and pieced together the bits and pieces I had cut from felt scraps to make a new cushion, pinning them into place on a piece of fleece fabric (actually a 110cm x 52cm piece I had cut from a £2.89 fleece blanket from the ever adaptable Ikea Polarvide range) ready to do battle with a sewing machine.

I’m always a bit nervous around sewing machines because I am not very well practised with them, so I kept the shapes to be sewn down simple and without any difficult or complex lines.

Using fleece and felt fabrics is a brilliant starting point as neither presents the additional worry of fraying, so for a relative beginner’s project it means that you can just pin your appliqué pieces down and start sewing – there are no edges to turn under and no need to zig-zag stitch an outline to prevent fraying edges.

Once all of the appliquéd pieces were completely sewn down I turned each of the short edges over and sewed a hem 2.5cm (1″) from each edge before laying the fabric appliquéd (right) side up on the floor and folding the two short edges toward the centre of the fabric, overlapping them by 5cm (2″) to create an envelope back with enough overlap that it wouldn’t need any closurs such as a zip or buttons (especially as fleece fabric is rather ‘grippy’.)

The finished cushion is a wonderful personalised addition to mine and Mr Awesome’s slowly more homely-feeling home, and looks great sat alongside the Awesome cushion, (more of which tomorrow…)