Cushion and TAST 15

I've been making a cushion this week for my new conservatory. I didn't want to buy any new fabrics so I used fabrics from my stash. The background fabric is quite old but the patterned fabrics I bought a couple of months ago from Fat Quarters,  a dream shop for quilters [hard to resist buying something even though I'm not a quilter]. They were just a small pack of coordinating fabrics and they go really well together. I appliqued the fabrics together using 'heat and bond' and then stitched around the shapes using the machine. Hand embroidery and beads came next before making up.

click on the images to enlarge

The stitch for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge is stem stitch. This is another of the stitches that I'm not really keen on and I don't much like the sample that I have done either. On the sample there is ribbon, transfer printed ribbon [the patterned one under the felt], needle felting, a slice of organza bag and a slice of painted/stamped paper. There is also decorative machine stitching, running stitch and the stem stitch and it will be another page for my fabric journal.

One of the first embroidered pictures I did, many years ago, had a lot of stem stitch on it and it took me years to complete. Maybe that is why I'm not keen on the stitch?

It was a kit from a magazine. Sorry about the poor quality of the photo, it has been a dark day. The bright circle of light is the flash from the camera.