Over the Easter weekend my delicious collection of cotton yarn slowly took shape into sixteen sea coloured granny squares.
I wanted to make every square different but realised it was quite a complicated mathematical problem with only five colours and was made even more difficult when you took into account the various tonal effects of the shades. I felt like I was doing a giant, colourful suduko puzzle. Jack came to my rescue and the finished design with a contrasting centre panel was totally his idea.
The crochet was completed by Sunday morning and joined together (using the same yarn and single crochet) by Lunch time.
When we returned home I searched through my stash of old linen and found the perfect tray cloth to use as a back for my cushion. It has embroidered (rein?) deer at each edge which were in a perfect colour to compliment the crochet and the size was just right to stretch around and form an attractive border at each side of my crochet panel.
I hand stitched the crochet to the linen and even sewed in a zip.
Something that I had never tried before but wasn't half as hard as I feared it would be. What made the zip even more pleasing was that it was one I had picked up from my favourite charity shop for 5p!
So now I have a lovely home made cushion with seaside colours to remind me of a happy Easter trip to lean on as I read the Alabama Stitch Book: Projects and Stories Celebrating Hand-Sewing, Quilting and Embroidery for Contemporary Sustainable Style and plan my next hand stitching adventure!