Greengate Cushion

What a busy and dramatic week!
Not much time for crafting (again!), as my dear sister, Jane (or 'middle-aged muddle' as she is known on the blog) came to visit on Sunday. This unfortunately coincided with a return to winter up here in Scotland and the weather was really so bad we hardly left the house. Now that she is gone it is absoluely glorious weather!
We did manage a trip to John Lewis, where I bought more wool and an embroidery hoop (more on that later).
Look at this massive pile of crochet flowers Jane has made!
She wanted to help me out in the shop by giving me all these to sell with my Bearpaw stuff (and doesn't want anything for them, bless her!). They are a bit smaller than the ones I make (and made of lovely soft wool) so I am thinking of attaching them to hairbands as an experiment. I also must get on with that Etsy shop as I now have more than enough goods to sell just in my 'real' shop.
Pretty much as soon as I had packed Jane off to the airport yesterday morning (in the snow!), I got a call from the local A&E department to say that Jonathan (hubby) was there, after cutting the top off his finger and was now being taken to somewhere else for plastic surgery!!
As you can imagine I was a bit shocked! I was also due to be on my own in the shop that afternoon and was panicking about how I would get him collected from hospital (thanks Allyson for coming in at such short notice).
Turns out he had crushed/mangled rather than sliced the top of his right-hand, ring finger and some of his middle finger on the large table saw. Luckily he had not broken the finger and he has gone back to the hospital today to have an operation involving a skin graft. Poor thing was pretty traumatised and in a lot of pain. Though he'd still managed to take a photo of the injury on his phone which I have so far refused to look at! Our 2 boys were happy to look at it though - men, eh?
It is all ridiculously ironic considering he has been a furniture maker for the last 17 years and yet this is the first 'saw related' injury he has had. Regular readers may remember me mentioning that we are closing our manufacturing facility down and Jonathan will be a furniture maker no longer. The day before he had finally said goodbye to his last worker and was really just supposed to be tidying up (most of the large machinery having been sold), but decided to use up some scrap making new window cills for the shop.
Luckily there were 2 guys working in the neighbouring unit and one of them kindly drove Jonathan to the Royal Infirmary (as even if he had been able to drive, his van was stuck in the snow outside!). So thank you very much Robert Wiseman Dairy!

Let's have a look at some lovely fabric to calm us all down after that harrowing story!
This is the back of a cushion I made before Jane arrived on Sunday.
We bought in a few rolls of gorgeous Greengate fabric for the first time this spring. Greengate is one of our most popular suppliers and I have been asked by customers on a number of occasions for the fabric on a roll. I took the plunge and even set up a cutting table, but no one is buying!
So I thought I would make a cushion to showcase the lovely designs. I especially like this beautiful one I used on the back. They are all £21.99 a metre and very good quality cotton (in case anyone reading is interested! I can mail order...)
I decided to try and embellish the flowers on the front with some embroidery. I would really like to try more embroidery as I feel I could do with a bit more practice, hence the hoop purchase. I took a lovely book home from the shop called 'Scandinavian Needlecrafts'. It has lot's of beautiful projects involving embroidery on to felt.
So if things calm down a bit at home I will try and give embroidery some attention and hopefully have something to show you next time!