My beach hut cushion + the Inspiration Challenge

I’m delighted to say that I’ve had a few messages asking for a quick tutorial on how I made my beach hut cushion for the beach hut Inspiration Challenge in June. So I’m pleased to share the step-by-step photos of my cushion with you all today and I also want to remind you that there is still plenty of time to get involved and make something  for July’s Inspiration Challenge too!

First, I chose a selection of fabrics from my stash of fat quarters (mainly from wholeport and some thrifted from old clothing) to cut out the beach hut shapes and I snipped around a lighthouse design on the piece of Porto fabric I already had from Abakhan. I positioned these on the sky-blue “background” piece of fabric and pinned them down before machine-sewing around the edges.

I then stuck on some sticky fabric-tape (like washi-tape but made of fabric, I found mine on Ebay) for the beach hut roofs and went over this with a line of stitching too. When it came to attaching the sun and the seagull, I added a little adhesive webbing to the back of the pieces and ironed them in place before sewing over the top.

For the sea I layered up pieces of folded fabric with sparkly ribbon, running lines of stitching back and forth using the sewing machine. This was my favourite part of the cushion and I’d like to do this effect all over a cushion front next time, perhaps with a rainbow of colours or use co-ordinating fabrics to create a striped/patchwork effect.

I then stitched the front ‘picture’ piece of fabric to two pieces of pink fleece which overlapped to form the back of the cushion cover – leaving a flap to put my cushion pad inside. When I had finished, I realised how well the cushion matched my vintage Paddington Bear pillow case – it even has a red lighthouse too!

Please join in with this month’s Inspiration Challenge. The theme is Maneki Neko/Lucky Animals and you can make anything you like with this inspiration as a starting point. Even if you’ve never made anything before, maybe this month it is the perfect time to start crafting, sewing, painting or writing and I’d love to see what you come up with! Send me your projects to [email protected] and I’ll share your photos and links at the start of next month – and don’t forget that there is a special prize draw to win a ceramic lucky cat and a purse from JoaniesGifts.co.uk – all the projects will be entered into a prize draw and the winner will be picked at random on the 1st August!

Other Inspiration Challenge articles

• A special prize fron Joanie’s Gifts for the Inspiration Challenge (cassiefairy.com)
• A beach hut inspired story by author Amanda Addison (cassiefairy.com)
• June’s Inspiration Challenge update and new inspiration for July (cassiefairy.com)
• May’s Inspiration Challenge update and new inspiration for June (cassiefairy.com)
• Don’t forget May’s inspiration challenge – vintage sewing machines (cassiefairy.com)
• Inspiration Challenge for May – get involved! (cassiefairy.com)
• Inspiration challenge theme for July (cassiefairy.com)