An upcycled memory cushion

A friend came to me with a brilliant idea recently. She asked if I could make her a patchwork memory cushion, using her baby's old flannel wraps, and with her name and birth details hand embroidered in the centre. What a fantastic use for those cherished flannels with so many special memories!



The sewing of the cushion should have been quite straightforward - a simple patchwork envelope cushion. No frills (literally), no bells and whistles. But I kept making silly mistakes (like sewing the cushion front the wrong way round or having the teddies upside down) so my seam ripper got quite a work out. And having never worked with flannel before, I found it a bit tricky to get perfectly butted patchwork seams, especially as the centre panel is cotton and stretches differently to flannel... So it took some trial and error but I am happy with the end result. Most importantly, my friend is delighted with it.



The central panel is hand embroidered (using my usual tracing technique for which I have a tutorial here). With the amount of embroidery I do I should probably look into getting an embroidery machine, but I am one of those strange people who finds hand embroidery very satisfying. It also seems the end product is made more special by all the effort that goes into doing it by hand. I know, such a glutton for punishment. But worth it, especially for a cherished item as I am sure this one will be.