A finish at last - Free motion Petal Cushion

I finished two craft projects last week, one was my crochet blanket which I'll do a separate post about and another was, shock horror from my Finish Along Quarter 3 list.

Number 9 on my list was a Free motion Quilting Petal Cushion that all I needed to do was bind, so simple really but still a finish. 

I've really enjoyed going to workshops over the last few years, having a day set aside for me to just sew, whether it's learning a new technique or just 'having a play' it's something I love but never found anything suitable in York that I could make so I've had to travel to scratch that itch. That itch is now well and truly scratched by Leeds MQG set up by the wonderful Lisa Sew in March this year. 

Last autumn however I was looking for a class and saw that Brioni was teaching a class that I liked the look of at The Skep, which is on the wrong side of Leeds to me, but off I travelled on a Sunday in December. I was able to get through the early stages on the project fairly quickly which allowed me to have a good play with the free motion quilting/applique part and I came home with a finished panel. 

I turned it into a cushion when I got home that night, cut the binding, and then it got lost in Christmas preparations and because I no real purpose for the project it sat unfinished and unloved on my shelf until Friday night when I carefully selected (grabbed) it as one of the projects I could take to our Leeds MQG day on Saturday.

I've played with machine binding in different ways before but wasn't quite sure I had it right, however I remembered Karen posting on instagram about her machine binding and she kindly offered to show me how she does it on Saturday. 

It's a bit wonky, partly due to the seam bulk making it harder to sew the binding on that it would be on a quilt, but it was really easy to do and I'm definitely going to try this on my next quilt. 

On the way home from Leeds MQG I went via Dunelm Mill and bought a cushion pad the right size for it and it's now on my chair at work - it's a bit big for this really but it gives it a purpose, gets it out of the house and brightens up my office a bit! 

1 down, 9 to go. At least one is better than nothing and I still have a few weeks left!