4 Years ago I made a cushion for Lotta, for her to sit on when she is on the couch. Although it was for a dog, I made it to blend in with the other cushions, and not look particularly doggy. The one you see up above is a new one, and below is what the 4 year old one looks like now.
Sadly, after 4 years, it looks very doggy. Definitely time to make a new one.
The first thing I did was pull out a whole lot of fabrics which toned in with another of my couch cushions (the one you can see in the top photo, on the right). I wanted a lot of variety. Using a feature fabric to inspire you is a great technique, if you are ever stuck for a starting point. Even though I didn’t use any of this feature fabric in my doggy cushion, (it’s scale would be too large anyway) picking the colours this way makes the 2 cushions harmonize wonderfully.
As you can see I went with plumy purples, apricots and oranges, buttery yellows, a range of warm greens and some taupe browns/greys. I made sure there were a range of lights, mids and darks, as well as a variety of scales of prints. The taupe/grey fabrics echoed the background colour of the feature fabric. A few of these fabrics didn’t make the cut,(because the scale on them was too big) but most of them are in the finished cushion. When in doubt I just held the fabric up against the feature cushion, and if it clashed, it was out.
I have been loving all the equilateral triangle quilts I have been seeing for the last year or so, and this cushions was an excellent way for me to experiment. For some rows I pressed all the seams to one side as I went. For other rows I pressed them all open. I found the latter to be easier to manage when it came to piecing the rows together.
It helped me when it came to lining up the points, and amazingly, some of the intersections are perfect!
I found the cutest backing fabric for the cushion, a very fine corduroy. I quilted the cushion-top onto a piece of old blanket with straight line quilting, (with orange thread) before I assembled the cushion. I finished the edges with orange binding, just like a quilt.
I’m pretty pleased with the end result and so is Lotta. I enjoyed this foray into equilateral triangle piecing so much that I have a whole quilt on the drawing board, and a pile of fabrics waiting to be cut.
Have you made anything with equilateral triangle piecing?