Before the blog: You are my sunshine cushion

Hello everybody!

Yesterday we got the news that the woman who taught Sing and Sign classes to my three little ones is having to close down her franchise due to the pandemic making the business no longer financially viable. I am very sad about this, Helen is an amazing teacher, so full of enthusiasm and love. All 3 of my kids loved her classes and they have had a lasting impact on them They still watch the DVDs. My eldest made friends at school with a Hearing Impaired kid partly because he already loved signing and found it easy to learn more signs to communicate with his new friend. And I met so many lovely other Mums at the classes - they really helped me keep what little remained of my sanity during my maternity leaves.

So I thought today would be a good day to tell the story of a cushion I made for Helen. I made it to give to her in 2016, when I was going back to work and assuming I wouldn't be coming back to her classes (I was wrong, my daughter appeared in November 2017, so I was back just over a year later after all). During my second maternity leave I had taken up sewing again seriously, so to me it was pretty obvious that I would sew her a gift.

Helen always said that 'You Are My Sunshine' was her favourite song from the classes, so I took that as my inspiration. Here is my initial sketch.

My stash at the time was not plentiful, but did include a sky fabric, that I had bought for making a baby quilt, and a suitable yellow. I settled on an applique design of a large quarter circle yellow son, with rays coming out of it, and embroidery of the words 'You are my sunshine'. Here it is laid out before sewing.

I stitched these down with needleturn applique, done by hand. I had thought the curve would proved challenging, but it really didn't, I remembered more of how to do this stuff than I thought I would.

I then embroidered the words using yellow embroidery thread.

And on to the quilting, also done by hand. I quilted the sunrays so they extended out to the edge of the fabric, and put a little 'cloud' around the words to try and make them stand out a bit more. In hindsight I wish I had made the embroidery a little bigger, more like the original sketch. Here is a view of the quilting as seen from the back. I made a closed cushion so this is completely hidden from view in the final piece.

And here is the finished piece, photographed in my garden in Banbury.

A sunshiny cushion for a lovely, sunshiny lady. I really do wish her all the best in her next endeavour, which I know she will be equally brilliant at.

And here are some pictures of me and my little ones enjoying her classes.