Introducing the Whirly Catherine Wheel Cushion!

I’ve made a few crochet cushion covers recently but they’re all been gifts for other people, and as lovely as it is to give them away, I quite fancied having one all for myself! Once I finished my star ripple blanket, I found I had quite a lot of yarn left, especially in Cream and Aster (blue). I thought I’d seen a pattern in one of my crochet magazines that used a fan stitch, but when I went looking for it I couldn’t find it.

Hmmm.

There’ always the possibility that I imagined it existed at all, or more likely that it wasn’t a pattern for a cushion but for something else and I just thought it would make a good cushion.

Double hmmm.

But then I thought of the Catherine Wheel stitch that makes up part of my stripey blanket WIP, and I came up with…

The Whirly Catherine Wheel cushion!

As I didn’t have a cushion pattern to work to, the sensible thing to do would have been to make a swatch so that I could work out precisely how many pattern repeats to do to fit my cushion. And if I had have bothered making a swatch, I could have posted a picture of it right here:

…

but  of course I threw caution to the wind and got to work straight away. Almost immediately it was obvious that I hadn’t made it wide enough, but it was too late! I was in love with the pattern, the yarn, the feel of it! The colours had already worked brilliantly in my blanket, but playing about and combining them again in different ways was just too much fun!

I was going to have to make it wider if it was going to fit a cushion. As I started sewing the ends in, I couldn’t help looking at the way the stitches were formed, and it occurred to me that it would be very easy to turn the work ninety degrees and finish all those half-wheels running along the edge! I could keep the pattern going sideways! I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this, but when noticed I could do it I felt like bloody Einstein!

Oooh! It’s working!

I had it in my head that when I’d crocheted the side seams I’d add a frilly border, but as soon as I’d squished the cushion inside I changed my mind. no extra frills for this bad boy: he was perfect! Well, almost perfect. I still had to add some buttons to the back. I chose some mismatched ones from my collection in similar colours, whipped up some button loops, and then my Whirly Catherine Wheel cushion was done!

Those are some fine looking buttons!

This is where I sit and crochet every day, hence the reading lamp that is handily doubling up as a spotlight for my new cushion. But really, this cushion should have its own spotlight. And fanclub. And bodyguard. It’s super cuddly and I have a feeling it’s going to get squished and cuddled  a lot.

This corner is where I nest, and I love it!

I knew as soon as I started my version of notyouraveragecrochet‘s As-We-Go Stripey Blanket that I’d be learning some new stitches, and it was fun to put one of them to use for this cushion. And whilst I’m on the subject of my stripey WIP, here’s a picture of how far I’ve got now.

Stripey stripy goodness. Okay, time to pick a spelling as either seems to be correct. I think I’ll go with stripy… no, stripey… no stripy… oh you know what I mean!

It’s getting harder to take a picture that shows all of it, but I’ve just finished row 74, which is the last row of the second mirrored chevron stripe. I’m going to have to put in another yarn order soon!

It’s Monday and that means Handmade Harbour…