Needless to say, the bench still requires a cushion because my research and sampling led me in another direction altogether. The client brief was written after the design was finalised!

I found plenty of source material, in the form of library books, factories and museums, to which I had easy access.

There was endless of scope for looking at the strong shapes and textures that had been used in the manufacture of pottery over the years.

The cover of my workbook [above] is one of the discarded samples from my selected source. It was made from stitching chiffon onto velvet and then burning back with a heat gun.

Coalport Cushion

I chose to make a cushion for my 3D item, and to take as my subject, manmade items and from this general starting point I looked at things I was particularly interested in.

Having just returned from a trip to Canada, I had many pictures of amazing buildings, towers and railway bridges, this led me to consider using wrought ironwork as a theme.

In the end, I took a completely different tack and chose the evolution of British pottery. I have to say that this was mainly because I wanted a cushion to go on a bench next to my dresser containing blue and white china.

Finally, I selected one of my own favourite pieces, an 18th century Coalport tea cup and saucer [right], as the source material and set about making various samples and test pieces before settling on a final design for the cushion.

The background fabric was made from transfer printed polyester with scraps of crystal organza and snips of thread trapped under a layer of pale pink chiffon.

Over this background I tried to create a crunchy carpet of flowers so I used metallic stranded threads, stranded cottons, marlitt and seed beads and stitched bullion knots, detached chain and buttonhole wheels, leaving enough space so that bits of the background fabric peeped through.

Finally I quilted four panels in lilac silk dupion and laid them over the background fabric. The back has the same quilted panels laid over plain darker velvet.

Flower Detail

Workbook Page

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