Valentine Lavender Cushion

By Rose Smith

Valentine’s Day coming up again! 

There are loads of patterns around for lavender bags but I wanted to make something a bit bigger so I made this ruffled cushion with an applique heart on it and filled it with a mixture of kapok stuffing and dried lavender left from last summer.

Begin with two 8” squares of fabric in a dark colour and two 5” squares in a light fabric. 

Back the two light squares with some sort of fusible interfacing and draw a heart on the interfacing. 

Cut round the heart shape and place the hearts in the middle of the dark fabric with right side up.  You will also need about 50” or 60” length of light fabric 2.1/2” wide for the ruffle.

Baste the hearts in place just to be sure that they lie flat. 

Zigzag around the edge of the hearts and then reduce the stitch length and satin stitch over the zigzag. 

I find that putting in that extra zigzag step helps the applique shape to lie flat.

Sew the two ends of the ruffle strip together so that you have a circle. 

Fold it in half along the length so that it becomes a double strip 1.1/4” wide. 

Set your machine to its longest stitch length and sew a seam on the raw edges length (not the fold), finishing stitching a few inches from where you began.  Use pins to mark the half way and quarter way lengths on the ruffle strip. 

This is so that you can have one quarter of the ruffle on each edge of the square of dark fabric so that the ruffle is gathered evenly on each quarter.

Hold the top thread of the gathering line of stitching and push the fabric away from the end of the thread so that it begins to gather. 

Gather from each end to the middle of the ruffle strip and keep gathering until each quarter measures just over 8”. 

Beginning in  a corner, start to pin the ruffle strip to the edges of one of the dark squares. 

The fold of the ruffle strip is towards the middle and the raw edges are in line with the edge of the square.

When the ruffle strip is pinned in place, lay the other dark square on top with right side down. 

Sew around the edge of the square leaving a gap of several inches in the stitching so that you can turn the cushion right side out. 

Check that you have caught all the layers of fabric with the stitching and then turn right side out. 

Fill through the gap with a mixture of toy stuffing and lavender and sew the gap together. 

This is a pretty little cushion that doesn’t take long to make and it can be personalised with an embroidered name or picture in the heart.

Rose Smith is passionate about quilting and likes to share her quilting ideas through tutorials and free quilt patterns on her website: Learn How to Quilt

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