Canada Embroidery Cushion

I am being super organised and writing this post at the weekend even though you are now reading it midweek. Why you ask? Well This Tuesday and Thursday evening (yes evening, of all the times?!) I have exams. Third year university psychology exams. So that explains my quietness during the last week or so...revision is taking my time and when not revising I have been chilling or spending time with my family.

The good news is my exams will be over on Thursday night. The bad news is I then have a 4000 word assignment due in a week and a half....but then again, I have already written it, it just needs some editing.
 So the upshot is I am having Friday off. And I am going to sew and craft and relax as much as possible!

A while ago I shared with you several tutorials for designing and sewing your own embroidery cushions. For my Mum's Christmas present this year, I decided to use them myself! I chose Canada as it is a very special place for our family - we love visiting and I am so jealous happy for my Mum that her and my Dad are returning there for a week in February.

I know that there are some Canadians who follow this blog so might read this post, see the cushion and be fairly confused about the things I decided to embroider. That is the beauty of the cushion...it is so completely personal. So although Parliament Hill makes sense, the 'Les Suites' logo refers to the hotel we always stay in, and the bear refers to one that my mum and I met in Edmonton Mall! We usually visit Ottawa but in the summer of 2003, we spent 5 weeks travelling across Canada stopping in Quebec, Edmonton, Jasper, Vancouver - it was an amazing holiday and I have so many great memories of that trip.

I was 11 and my brother 14, and on the trip I ate a snail (or swallowed it with my eyes closed! - in a restaurant by the way...not just a random snail!), stayed in the hotel alone with my brother one evening while my parents went to watch some fireworks (we watched Legally Blonde and felt like such rebels when we went down the corridor to get ice!), and decided I was desperate to go canoeing only to get out into the middle of the lake and decide that I was absolutely petrified of the water and we had to go back! It was the first time I ever saw 'Friends' on TV, saw a whale or two in the ocean (or at least their tails) and had a girls night with my Mum (the boys went to see a Canadian Football game - we ate pizza and saw Freaky Friday)

As you can tell I have so many memories of that trip and our other visits to Canada and this is where the design for this cushion came from!

Do you have any memories you would like to display as an embroidered cushion?

Here are my tutorials for...

1. Designing an embroidered cushion

2. Embroidery basics so you can sew your cushion

Have a great day!

Love Rebecca