Nefertiti

My Mam has rediscovered tapestry and decided to make herself some cushions... well, she'd do the tapestry and she asked me, very nicely, if I would sew them up. This all sounded very straightforward and I thought I could get these rattled off this afternoon. You may be already suspecting that things did not go quite according to plan.

It started off so well, but I ended up doing a lot of swearing at Darth Sewing Machine.

So, my Mam is going with an Egyptian theme - Nefertiti and Tutenkhamun.

I thought it would be a good idea to get rid of the excess tapestry backing and thought that folding under would create a piece of fabric that was too bulky to sew.



Therefore I stitched the cushion to a piece of cotton lining and then trimmed it. The next stage being to attach the piping braid.



Disaster! Look at the state of this. The tapestry backing is sticking out between the piping and the design. It looked rubbish, so I had to remove the piping and have a rethink... which then meant that the tapestry was in danger of unravelling itself. Bollocks.



The solution, though a less than brilliant one, was to do what I should have done in the first place. I used the material I bought for the cushion-back to tape the edges, and it actually looks ok.



I decided not to add the piping, for two reasons - it was going to make the cushion look to busy and, the fabric was getting too thick.

As it was, the zip took some sewing. With the thick tapestry attached to the cotton lining, plus the fabric tape to protect the edges, this had become a very chunky piece of material and sewing the zip showed that this was becoming to much for Darth. It snapped my heaviest needle.



I managed just to sew the zip but when it came to attaching the cushion back... things didn't go well. Two snapped needles later and I gave up, facing the inevitable - I was going to have to hand sew the two pieces of fabric together, to make the actual cushion.



And, here we have the finished product, finally.



I have to make Tutenkhamun's cushion this week as I'm going to see my Mam on Friday and I suspect she might quite like to have her cushions then.