Last month I embroidered a robin, it was pretty easy to do as I used a heavier weight of cotton which has a very pretty design of robins. I used one as the base for the embroidery…

At the time I was still undecided what to do with it, I did ponder about including it in my garden book but I decided to make it into a mini cushion for a Christmas present.

I rummaged in my stash and found a fat quarter of duck egg blue with a subtle pattern on it, not too overpowering for the robin! I trimmed the robin to just over 4.5″ and cut 2″ strips, stitching a simple border round the embroidery. With hindsight I should have stitched the side ones first then the top and bottom would have the wider width, but it looks fine.

I stitched a square of the same fabric for the back and stuffed it, not too hard, just enough to hold it’s shape without distorting. I felt it needed a little extra, so I found two old DMC threads, one a darker duck egg and one lighter. I have a cord-maker which twists threads neatly into a cord so I measured a generous three times the perimeter so as to have sufficient and twisted the threads into a very pretty cord. The colours worked even better than I expected.

I was planning to just stitch it round the outer edge of the cushion, but when I tried it round the embroidery it really lifted it so I couched it round there to start with and then the outer edge. Talk about playing thread chicken, I had 5mm of cord left!!

All it needed now was a pretty button to cover the join…

I’m really pleased with him, the finished cushion is about 6″ square, now I need to wrap him up and post him on his way.