I bought a job lot of 1950s embroidery projects from Ebay a while ago and this is the second one which I’ve tackled. The design is very traditional and old fashioned this time and none of the work had been started, it had obviously spent the last 60 years or so folded away in a drawer. When we move I’m hoping to get a house with a conservatory this time as I want a place for my cactus plants which will be safe for them. I’ve been keeping them in the greenhouse for years with no problems but the last two years I’ve had cactus fatalities when my aluminium greenhouse door froze up for weeks on end, so I couldn’t even rescue them. I digress – the cushions are for a conservatory which doesn’t exist as yet – except in my imagination.

As you can see from the first photo I should have done a lot (18 to be exact) of satin stitch circles but I thought the boredom of that might kill me. My solution was to rake through my mum’s old button tin and it came up trumps, as usual. Of course I’ve added buttons to the tin over the years but about half of them were mum’s. I found two sets of buttons of a similar rusty colour, I think they were originally on shirts which wore out. As luck would have it I had exactly nine of each set – perfect and they were very quickly sewn on. I think they look better than the satin stitching would have looked anyway. The flowers are going to be filled in yellow like buttercups and the others will be daisies. I’m hoping to get it finished soon because I have another Jacobean embroidery project which I’m chewing at the bit to start.

The bottom left hand button looks strange but in reality it looks like the others, it must have been the flash or angle or something!