Colwill - Cushions & quilts: quilting projects to decorate your home

Animals, the countryside and country life have inspired me since I was a young girl and provided endless ideas for sewing. This book offers some of those ideas in a collection of lovely cushions and quilts to enhance your home or to make as gifts for family and friends.

Inspiration is all around me on the farm where I live and work, including the glorious Cornish countryside, the day-to-day farming tasks and also my dogs and horses. I love the flowers in spring and enjoy capturing the lovely vibrant colours of buttercups with swallows flying low over them. Each season brings with it unique colours, skies and textures just waiting to be captured in fabric and thread.

When I married I changed from dressmaking to home-making and made my first quilt over thirty-five years ago. This led me into working in interior design, where I learned about colour and how it can affect your mood. My passion for colour, texture and fabrics, both new and old, grew from making home items into quilts and using every bit of spare fabric to make a comfortable home.

Patchwork and quilting, and especially the materials and techniques, have moved on since I began quilting. Today it is easier than ever to learn the basic techniques and then take them in your own direction, and I hope the projects here encourage you to do that. We all see fabrics and colours in different ways, which is one of the reasons why patchwork is so exciting and addictive.

In this book I describe my unique way of creating cushions and quilts. You can make the projects just as they are or modify the ideas to create your own individual style. Whether using vintage fabrics or brand new, you can escape into a wonderful world of fabric and stitches. I have designs stacked up in my head like planes waiting to land at an airport and always have a little project by my side ready for the odd five minutes of sewing.

For most of the projects, patchwork is combined with appliqu and hand embroidery and the sewing techniques are clearly described to help you achieve beautiful results. You can use needle-turn appliqu (my favourite) or fusible web, which is usually faster. Each project lists the materials needed, followed by step-by-step instructions with diagrams and photographs to help you make the project. The templates needed can be found at are included.

Recording your life story in stitches is good for the soul and so relaxing as you become engrossed in a project. Dont worry if your stitching isnt flawless practice makes perfect! So, have fun using the ideas in this book and like me, let one quilt or cushion lead to another, and another...

This cushion is great fun and really easy to make. It can be constructed from small squares using left-over bits of your favourite fabrics. You can even use labels from childrens clothes, which will make treasured memories. Once you get the idea you can change the sizes of the squares to make a larger cushion, and then add borders in the same sequence.

The use of linen fabric creates a lovely country feel, with the easy quilting worked with a thick perle thread to create a bolder stitch. Small mother-of-pearl buttons add a decorative touch in the centre of some of the squares but you could use buttons rescued from old garments. Buttons are used again as a decorative fastening for the cushion.

Requirements

Mixed fabrics, twenty-five 2in (6.3cm) squares

Linen or plain cotton for borders and backing, 30in (75cm) (width of fabric)

Patterned fabric for lining/binding, 6in (16.5cm) (width of fabric)

Calico for lining, 22in (56cm) square

Cotton wadding (batting), 22in (56cm) square

Perle no.8 thread in ecru, for quilting

Blending thread for piecing and a strong thread for sewing on buttons

Mother-of-pearl buttons: five or six small ones for decorating the front and five large and five small for the cushion fastening

Cushion pad, 18in (45.7cm) square (will be rolled in half)

Finished size: 19in 13in (48.3cm 33cm)