Having been interested in all things hand made related for most of my life means that I have some quite old design and craft books. There are several of these books that are very worn looking because I have spent many a happy hour leafing through the pages and looking at the projects. Until recently, when I managed to get off the rat race merry go round (whether I can make this a permanent change remains to be seen!), I didn’t have a lot of time to attempt that many of the projects, especially those that needed some time to learn new techniques.
There was one particular project in this book that I always wanted to make and now, finally, I have! The book project intends this to be a lavender pillow or a pincushion, but I think it is much nicer (with a few tweaks) as a wedding ring pillow.
The pillow front is made with woven ribbon in shades of mint, cream and cool and hot pink, and the back is ivory handloom silk dupion. Cream lace trims the edges and a hand rolled ribbon rose sits over the ring ribbons. I’ve never done ribbon weaving to make a fabric before and I suspect that I made learning the technique harder than it needed to be by choosing this project, which calls for working with 3mm wide ribbon – fiddly! I did quite enjoy the process though and I love the look of the finished fabric.
My own wedding at Saffron Walden registry office was a very fun and very small affair with just the two of us and our two witnesses, Clare and Lawrence. I have some brilliant and amusing memories of the day and one of the more amusing moments was seeing our wedding rings placed on a pillow of apricot coloured polyester and nylon lace, which was what the registrar whipped out for disorganised couples who hadn’t provided their own. I guess that memory has stayed with me more than I thought and maybe this little pillow is an antidote to that!
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