Staring Creatures From The Ghetto

This week, my lovely, long neglected readers,  I'm going to tell you in some detail about how I made cushions. No- don't leave! I promise I will make it as interesting as cushion production can be. First, let me present my Printed Creatures. The birds have starey eyes, because the ghetto is dark.

These are Doris and Gerard. Doris is on the left. They say very little, probably because they are illustrations, but if they began to speak to me in a non-worrying-hearing-voices kind of way, they would be enigmatic.

This is Penelope, she's a bulldog. She doesn't have starey eyes, because that would indicate wide eyed naivety, and to me she looks cynical. You may have seen her before, if you came across the button cards.

  

Finally for now (I do have more creatures, but they are staying in the fictional ghetto, as they haven't yet been photographed) This is Henry the rabbit.

And now the cushions. I printed onto a recycled quilt I bought in a charity shop. (I suppose I thrifted and then upcycled it).

I printed the creatures onto the cushions using printing ink from The Indian Block Printing Company (www.theindianblockcompany.co.uk), which was very effective, it also has a nice shiny finish to it. It was a paler blue colour than the picture on the website, so I mixed it with some acrylic to make a deeper blue. 

Once I had my nice printed shapes on the cotton, I stitched around every contour I could reach with my sewing machine, then backed the print with some felt to make it stand away from the background more. On this particular cushion,  I gave Doris a kind of lacy black eye, and then embellished the background with some more stitching, over and around the existing pattern. I got a great thread set from Lidl, with lots of bright colours, which I used for this. This cushion is finished with some beads.

This cushion (featuring Henry) is the most heavily embroidered, with the most contrasting thread, and so far the only one I have given Coraline-style button eyes. The background of this one is outlined in fabric pen. Believe me, I needed a break from machine embroidery at this point. Current record of needles broken: Seven. In one day. 

Thank you for reading! I won't subject you to another blog post solely on cushion making, but if you would like to see more photographs as I make them, follow @PrintedGhetto on Twitter. I also post pictures of drawings and works in progress. If you are interested in buying a cushion,check out my Etsy page, OR my Folksy page.