Monday 17 June 2013

butterfly cushion



Hello everyone! How was your week? I've been very busy playing with some of the new and upcoming applique dies for Sizzix over the past couple of weeks and making some projects that will be in a magazine later this Summer.

One of the dies I tried is a simple butterfly shape (I don't have the exact code for this yet, but there are many other butterfly dies on the website and this principle will work with lots of shapes as long as they are simple and single pieces)

Butterfly pillow

I fused fabric to bosal craft tex, which is a heavyweight interfacing, similar to curtain pelmet interfacing - it's useful for making bags to keep them rigid. I then used the big shot and my butterfly die to cut out my shapes. I layered 2 at a time - so it was 2 layers of interfacing, and 2 layers of fabric and it cut beautifully with no issues at all. The interfacing is thick, so I was surprised it cut through 2 layers of it without needing a little help!

I then stitched my butterflies in a line of 3 down the middle of a piece of canvas fabric (I used a heavyweight canvas to create a nice sturdy cushion cover, rather than regular cotton because I didn't want to quilt it). The stitches just go through the centre of the butterflies, so they're free to flap around.


Butterfly applique

I added a simple flange type border by cutting strips using the 1.5" strip die and added an envelope opening to the cushion.

All in all it took me around half an hour, and I love the effect of the 3D butterflies! I think it'd work nicely with circles too, or hearts and would make some really cool 3D effects on cushions. Or you could sew the butterflies to ribbon and make bunting for a little girl's room. I'm going to do some more playing around with this idea and see what I can come up with!




4 comments:

  1. Very cute! and I love a pillow with cute binding.

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  2. Looks like they want to fly off! Would be great on some of that invisible thread dangling from the ceiling!

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