Comfortable Cafe Cushion

The Cafe de Paris cushion is finished!

It went together fairly quickly in the end, especially as I decided to do some simple straight line quilting rather than any fancy, complicated FMQ type stuff :)

Cafe Cushion quilting

I used my Hera marker to draw out the lines before quilting, and it was definitely easier to see the marks when I was sewing in the daylight!

The plan originally was to space the lines evenly around the centre diamond but a slight muck-up (sorry design decision!) early on meant that the spacing was irregular at each side. Fortunately, I actually liked how that turned out so went with it and mixed up the measurements on all of the sides!

The cushion back is an Envelope back with binding as in the pattern, but I am not sure about having an envelope back on such a large cushion. The cushion cover is 20.5" x 20.5" as in the pattern, and I think if I was making such a large cushion again I would go with a zipped or button closure.

I didn't have a big enough cushion insert when I finished this and had to go out and buy one. The cushion inner is 50cm x 50cm to give that stuffed look that I like.

The cushion pattern is from this book

There are several more projects in the book that I would like to make, but I will be checking the instructions carefully as there were a couple of errors in the measurement instructions for this cushion. The instructions lead you to cut the pieces for the back to be 20.5" wide but the cushion front is trimmed to 21" x 21" and the measurements for the solid strips for the top and bottom of the cushion front are 17.25" long when they should be 17.5". Neither of these were a particular problem for my cushion, but might be an issue if you were fussy cutting the squares for the top left and bottom right corners and then had to shave 0.75" off to make the pieces fit.

Apart from those minor blips the cover went together really well.

Not only is this a finished project so I can link up to Crazy Mom Quilts




but it is also my first finish for Q3 in

and my first project to link up for the Craft Book link up at



                    
and finally because this project is actually for me

So many birds with one project :)

If I had actually been to Paris on holiday I could even have made it my contribution to the

Sadly I haven't, but if you have and haven't decided what to do for the competition, to be in with a chance of winning some of that gorgeous fabric that's been posted about recently, then this might just spark off an idea or two.