Rainbow Dots Cushion

Die used: Circles, 3/4in

Hello again!

This is the last cushion for a while I promise as our sofas and chairs will soon be fully brightened up for spring and summer!
I had planned to make a bolster cushion but bolster pads had sold out when I went to buy one and so the idea for this came into being whilst staring at the range of cushion pads and trying to think of an alternative - forced inspiration often results in some of my favourite projects which I think this might well be!

Wanting a change from rectangles and squares I chose a circular cushion pad which automatically led to thinking about a circles die. There have been some beautiful rainbow-coloured quilts appearing on my Instagram feed lately and with that as colour inspiration I dug out some rainbow scraps from my scraps box.

I pressed some iron-on adhesive (fusible web) onto the reverse of the fabric pieces and then using my Big Shot Plus and circles, 3/4in die, cut a pile of rainbow spots - as many as would fit from some of the smaller scraps.

From some solid white fabric I cut out a circle (approximately an extra 3/4 inch all round the edge than the pad) for the cushion front and laid it out on a doubled-over towel on a table-top. Next the backing paper was peeled away from all of the small circles and then arranged them so that they radiated out from the centre point in colour groups.

Once happy with the layout they were fixed in place with a careful press from the iron. A quilt sandwich was assembled with some batting and scrap lining to back it, basted together and then it was time for some intense free motion quilting practice.

I toyed with the idea of quilting it with small squares (I do like neat and ordered) but decided to go against my need for uniformity and try some scribbly, chaotic FMQ quilting. The idea being that the combination of squiggly quilting and scattered spots would give more of an impression of a colour explosion.

I'll finish the cushion this week, maybe even finally learning how to do a buttonhole on my new sewing machine in the process (I've said it so have to do it now)!

Happy sewing!