Oh brill, what a great thread. There are some fantastic ideas here.
Mabel, you're Bible cover is beautiful. I need to make a photo album cover out of a birth sampler and wasn't quite sure how to do it, I am feeling confidant now I've seen your piccies.
I've made a cushion. I never thought to take pics in stages, but I'll try to add a little walk-through of how I did it.
I took a thin peice of paper (so I could see the cross stitch underneath), placed it over my finished cross stitch.
I then drew a heart shape around the finished design, leaving a bit of a border between the outside of the design and the heart I had drawn.
I then cut the heart shape out and used it as a templete to draw a heat on a large peice of paper.
I then drew a much larger heart around the first heart - this was to be the size of the finished cushion + some spare for sewing together.
I cut around this large heart and used it to draw the shape onto my chosen fabric, twice. I cut out both of these hearts. As the fabric was thin, I also cut out 2 whire hearts to attach to the inside of these to make them thicker (if that makes any sense?!).
Using a sweing maching I attached the pretty white edging (I don't know the correct term for it
).
The first small paper heart templete that I made, was then used to cut a heart shape out of the front heart.
I placed my cross stitch behind the heart apature, once lined up I pinned it in place, also pinning some fabric behind as a backing.
Next step was to sew the cross stitch in place (again, using a sewing machine).
(the cross stitch is 'framed' by the fabric, it's not stuck on the front of it)
I pinned the silver edging in place, then sewed it on by hand.
Next step was to sew the back & front panels together (remember thehy both need to have the fron facing in, as you will turn it inside out later, which will make it the right way), leaving a section un-sewn, in order to add the stuffing.
Now I turned it 'inside-out', stuffed it with some wadding (taken from an old cushion), then sew the final bit up by hand.
I hope that makes sense and I will rememebr to take some step-by-step piccies next time as they are so much easier to follow than my waffle!