This is a butterfly cushion with some lovely appliqué features on the front, which you can customise to the tastes of yourself or the little one you're making it for. If you choose a couple of different cotton lawns with nicely contrasting colours and patterns then you can easily make a unique and eye-catching design!

To sew your own cuddly butterfly, I’ve prepared a PDF pattern which contains a pattern for both the basic cushion and the applique details shown here in the tutorial (of course you can design your own applique shapes if you want). Aside from this, you will need about 150cm / 59″ of piping.

Step 1: Iron-on the Applique Shapes

We begin by preparing the applique. Iron a piece of double sided interfacing (we’ve used Pellon 805 Wonder-Under-Paper) onto the wrong side of the fabric you want to use for your motifs and then cut them out using either the heart and circle design shown here, or make up your own pattern. Position the motifs on the front piece of the butterfly and iron them on.

You also have the option of strengthening the main fabric by applying an interfacing such as Pellon 806 Stitch-n-Tear to the wrong side.

Step 2: Sew Round the Appliqued Shapes

Once ironed into place, you should applique the motifs on with a zig-zag stitch. For this it is best to reduce the tension on your machine and set a small stitch length and width. Remember to test the stitch on a piece of scrap fabric before you start! Once you’ve finished the sewing you can carefully rip off any excess Stitch-n-Tear.

Step 3: Sew on the Piping

Sew the fabric strip that you have cut out (140 x 10 cm) into a ring and use a zipper foot on your machine to attach the piping to the right side of the fabric. Leave a little distance between the actual piped part of the piping and your stitching.

The start and end of the piping should overlap and be sewn as shown in the pictures.

Step 4: Sew on the Strip

Pin the edge of the fabric ring with the piping onto the front of the butterfly, right sides together.

Sew the pinned seam, again using the zipper foot. The stitch line should be just inside that of the piping, so that the line of stitching on the piping won’t be visible. To make it a little easier to sew, you can clip the seam allowance before or during sewing, so that it fits the curves of the butterfly a little more easily.

Step 5: Sew on the Back

The back of the butterfly is sewn on in the same way as the front.
Use a 1 cm seam allowance and leave an opening of about 10 cm, so that you can stuff the cushion.