I have recently had a little problem which I hope to have solved, with a little judicious stitchery.
The 13 year old is on holiday from school this week, when he isn’t at school or asleep he is generally in his room on his computer playing games either alone or with “virtual friends “ who might be anywhere in the waking world. He sits on a computer chair which he finds less than comfortable so he will creep into my bedroom and take my lovely feather pillow in crisp white linen, to sit on!
As you can imagine, I’m not impressed by having to sleep on a pillow which has been in close proximity to a 13 year old boy’s rarely washed, and flatulent nether regions only minutes before I retire to bed and for probably the preceding 12 hours.
My solution is a feather cushion of his very own to sit on. I had one in my stash, but no cover for it.
Looking in my fabric stash, apart from my check shirts which are not negotiable, I have very little which isn’t rather too girly for a boy who does not countenance anything which might blight the tender shoots of his pubescent masculinity.
I found a shirt in cream and blue stripes, one of my early mistakes when buying shirts, it is striped not checked; two pairs of his father’s pajama bottoms, worn out at the seat but still plenty of wear in the legs (what does that tell you about my Dearest?) and a pair of his father’s boxer shorts size small from when he used to smoke 60 a day and had the hips of a racing snake, long time past.
I had seen the disappearing nine patch block but had not yet had the opportunity to use it, given the proportion of fabrics I had ( 3;4;4;1) it seemed a good choice.
I used the darker check from the boxer shorts for the centre square I’d only need 8 4” squares. The cream shirt and blue checked PJ’s for the sides and corner squares, 32 of each, and the striped pair of PJ’s for the outer border.
Make a nine patch, press it and slice it up again and across the centre in both directions to produce 4 blocks.
I tried two different placements of the resultant squares, so the two sides of the cushion are subtly different. It will need a zip, no doubt it will need washing frequently, and probably an inner cover to help keep the cushion clean. The 13 year old’s room is mainly blue and cream so this will blend in fairly well, by which I mean there is nothing here for him to take offence at, he may accept it without too much persuasion. We won’t need to consider “what people might think”, or any of those other concerns so particular to 13 year old’s.
