The finished cushion!

If you are following the progress of the cushion I am making for the rocking chair in my conservatory, you will know that I had finished the hand embroidery and was feeling quite satisfied with progress so far.  However, I did think that the background was missing something and I had thought that I would try out some of my newly learned free motion quilting between the appliqued shapes.

I had thought that the easiest stitch to use would be a simple 'stipple' but, I was wrong!!  I tried it and it was extremely difficult to get it looking nice without stitching over the applique shapes or the embroidered stems.  So I unpicked it all which, took a V-E-R-Y long time and left me with little pinprick needle holes in the background fabric which I couldn't get rid of.  (Not sure if you can see them here but believe me they were there!!)

What was I going to do now?!  Well, I decided the only way forward was to try a different free motion quilt stitch which would be easier to fit in round the shapes.  I have to point out here that, it is probably only my lack of experience using the stipple stitch which made it difficult for me to use it.

So, I started again this time using a 'pebble' FMQ stitch.  It is a more dense design and, was easier to control nearer to the edges of the flowers and butterflies.  I decided that I liked how it was looking and, there really was no going back at this point!

I spent on and off all day (it is a very labour intensive stitch and you need to take breaks between sections otherwise your shoulders and hands get too tense) slowly filling in all the background with pebbles.  It is not perfect, so do not look too closely but, I am delighted with the result.

All that remained then was for me to make the quilted fabric up into a cushion which I did by adding an envelope backing and some binding.

And, here it is! My finished cushion.  

Of course now that it is finished I have decided until I make another cushion to go with it that it isn't right in my rocking chair as the second cushion in the chair is red!!

So I have swapped it into another chair for the time being where it looks very pretty.

And I've moved the cushions from this chair into the rocking chair as they don't clash with the red cushion!  So all my chairs are happy now!!