どうですか。。。(What do you think?)

You may recognise these motifs from a few posts ago :) After making 7 rows of 13 pinwheel motifs, I took a hard look at it & the possibilities. If I wanted a mini-afghan I'd be working 'till Christmas, so I downsized my ideas & messed around with the fabric a bit. 

If you look carefully you can see that the edges are on the diagonal (follow the line of buttons from lower right to upper left in this photo to see it). I wondered what would happen if I made a tube & added one more set of motifs to unite it all. I started to do this & it looked as if it would make a 14"-16" square- perfect for a cushion cover! So I went looking deeply into the attic/sewing/treasure room & found a 12"x16" cushion form. I like to use what's at hand, so I snipped out the 2 uniting motifs I'd put in & wrapped the resulting tube around the form- it fit perfectly if I overlapped the beginning & ending rows, which would make for a nice opening to insert the form (something I hadn't figured out yet anyway).

For the ends of the fabric tube I used the black yarn I'd decided not to use for the motifs- I'm so glad I reserved it! I held the ends together & crocheted through both layers (3 layers where the motifs overlap- you can see it at the top of this picture, the purple on top of light blue), making it up as I went along. I added a decorative second row to the ends- you can see the shell stitch & picots I used to jazz them up. I decided on 2 rows of buttons to fasten the overlapped motifs at the opening, since the bottoms of the inside motifs might migrate over time & get bunchy. The lower set of buttons are shiny brass ones (there were exactly 7 of them, which is what I needed), recycled from who knows what, who knows when... found in my button stash. The second row of buttons are random ones from said stash. They looked cute & add to the random-colour-ness of this project. I used the same yarn in white (stuffed into a thin tapestry needle) to sew the buttons on, & I kept the leftover in the needle just in case these buttons don't survive "life with Brendan" :) (He's a bit hard on the decor lately, as his body is growing at an amazing rate & when he throws himself on the sofa these days, everything goes flying...)

I am very pleased with this little cushion (that only just found out that it's a cushion...).