born again creations: 42. Dirtying up the Doily

I had to laugh when my husband came to me with this design concept. You see, he's not a fan of doilies (or crochet rugs for that matter) he finds them "nanaish" . Every time I begin a sentence with Look what I made out of this doily! he gets a pained expression his face. He prefers the sleek simple designs of Mid Century furniture, bold colours, and screen printed fabrics to anything fussy and frilly. Today's project is my husband embracing the doily cushion, but on his terms. He loves traditional tattoo imagery and particularly 'Day of the Dead' skulls, you might remember them from the Mexcian inspired ikea stool he transformed. Perhaps this is his way of admitting that there will be doilies around for as long as I'm still thrift shopping... which looks like it'll be for a while. Better to embrace the doily I say, and make it work for you than to fight it.

So here is our joint effort made with thick black velvet and a vintage doily. And I have to say, I love how it came out. He's pretty good at this stuff this man of mine.

Skull Cushion made from vintage doily

Time: An afternoon
Cost: Under $20

I had a long rectangular vintage doily in my stash downstairs that I would have paid $1 or $2 for in an op shop, and I bought half a metre of velvet for $12.50. I would have preferred to use vintage velvet which I think is far superior in quality, but I couldn't source any in time. Mr J printed a skull shape off the computer and laid the doily over the top before carefully cutting out the shape. Since he doesn't sew, he made it rather, erm, detailed. I don't think he quite understood that I would have to hand stitch around each and every piece of his design. Ahem.

Once he was finished he handed it over to me and I placed it onto my 40cm square of black velvet using quilting basting spray to help hold it in place while I stitched. Then it was just a matter of carefully stitching around the skull outline, jaw, eyes, and nose. I added some sparkly buttons for eyes.

To sew the cushion I placed the right sides of the two 40cm squares together and stitched around the outside leaving a gap at the bottom to turn it and insert the cushion inner. I bought a zipper but decided at the last moment to just hand stitch the opening closed.

It took a while to make but we're both really happy with how it turned out. It's always fun to see something that you created in your imagination come to life.