Last year, I became obsessed with making my own version of the fluffy, festive-themed pillows that were all over Pinterest and Instagram. If you haven’t seen them before, they’re this assortment of cushions, made with a soft, teddy fleece, in a variety of festive shapes and patterns like candy canes, gingerbread men, Christmas trees— all sorts! My favourite one, though, was a cushion that looked like one of those swirly, round, peppermint candies. Because the prices were pretty steep (and I’m pretty sure lots of the ones I saw were from slightly suspicious sources), I did what any crafter would do: I said to myself, “I can make that!”. So I did! However, I was a little too late to get it done in time for the festive season last year, so I decided to make it ready for this year, instead.

To make this Peppermint Swirl Cushion, I adapted this free pattern from the Red Heart Design Team. You can also find this pattern on Ravelry. 

Table of Contents

• Materials
  • Sirdar Happy Chenille: Mini Review
• Adaptations
• Final Thoughts

Materials

To make this cushion, I used the following materials:

• 3.00mm hook.
• Sirdar Happy Chenille yarn, in the shades Lollypop (0031) and Soda Pop (0021).
• Darning needle.
• Scissors.
• 16″ round cushion form (I bought mine from Wool Warehouse).

The original pattern calls for a non-chenille, worsted weight yarn, but the yarn I used is DK weight (and fluffy, obviously!). Therefore, I used a smaller hook than the one suggested (3.00mm, instead of 5.50mm). I actually went quite a lot smaller with my hook, to get a tighter gauge, in an attempt to make my work less gappy, but, honestly, if I made this again, I think I’d go even smaller.

Sirdar Happy Chenille: Mini Review

I hate to say it but… I was not a fan of this yarn. Admittedly, this was my first time working with chenille yarn, so maybe I just don’t enjoy working with this style of yarn in general, but my goodness was it frustrating to work with!

Chenille yarn is basically made up of a central piece of thread with a layer of fluff attached all around it. The central yarn in the Happy Chenille is very… string-like (which, again, could be normal!) and breaks really easily. Also, the fluffy layer isn’t attached very securely, so my yarn kept shedding, leaving me with sad patches of plain string… Weirdly, the red shade seemed to shed much more than the white, so the white parts of the project, me and the sofa I was sat on while making this ended up covered in red fluff.

Overall, I don’t think I’d use this yarn again if I could avoid it! I’d love to try some other chenille yarns, just to have something to compare it to, but, honestly, I’m not sure I can face it just yet…

Adaptations

I did make a few changes to the original pattern for this project, just to make my cushion cover more similar to my inspiration photos. Some of these changes were more successful than others…

• Instead of crocheting over the colour not in use, I opted to carry it loosely along the back of the work.

I did this because I didn’t want the colours peeking through, which you can see has happened in the original patterns photos! At first, I thought this had worked well, but, because the work is quite open, I have had some trouble with bits of yarn poking through to the front of the work, which is a shame! I do think that using a tighter gauge could fix this, though?

• I started one side with white yarn, the other with red.

Look, the perfectionist in me wanted both sides of this cushion to be identical, but I was worried about the amount of yarn I had left. You use significantly more of the colour you start with (which I can’t quite figure out because surely it’s just the extra from the first round?), so I did start running a little low on white yarn after the first side. Instead of buying more yarn (which would have been a shame, seeing as I was so mad at it by this point), I opted to just even out my yarn usage by starting the back with red, and, honestly, you barely even notice it.

• I left the border off (and sewed the cushion together around the form).

I wanted a really clean, modern look for this cushion, so I opted to leave the candy cane-esque border from the original pattern off. Instead, I just stitched the two sides of the cushion together, right over the cushion form, making sure to stitch red section to red section with the red yarn, and white section to white section with the white yarn, for a seamless look. This does mean the cushion cover can’t be removed, but, honestly, I don’t think you could wash this yarn (even by hand) without it all falling apart anyway, so it’s no loss.

One note here: for the white shade, I was able to use long lengths of the yarn to sew up the cushion and carry them underneath the red sections to get to the next white one. Because the red yarn was so sheddy, I found it got messy pretty quickly if I tried to use a longer length, so I opted to use shorter lengths and sew in more ends (except, as you’ll soon read about, I didn’t sew in any ends, so I felt very smug… until they all started poking out… Sigh). Also, I may be complaining about using the chenille yarn, but sewing up the cushion with it was SO MAGICAL because you can be as messy as you want and it will still look absolutely perfect! 1 point for chenille.

• I increased the number of rounds to ensure good fit/account for my smaller gauge.

Because I was using a lighter weight yarn and a smaller hook, I needed to increase the number of rounds I worked so that my cushion cover would fit the 16″ cushion pad I had purchased. This was super easy to do, because the pattern is so simple and repeats every round, so I just had to keep working until it was the right size. To measure that, I just placed the work over the pad and stretched it slightly (but not too much!), so that the cover would be nice and snug, but not distorted. When two opposite points on the circumference reached the seam of the cushion form, I fastened off (leaving a long end for sewing up) and made the second side the same size.

• I didn’t darn in my ends— just tied them off and left them loose.

This is very much a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ kind of situation: this did not work. The reason why I opted to do this is not because I hate sewing in ends (although I absolutely do), but because I was worried about the darned-in ends being visible from the front of the work (again, another problem caused by the loose gauge). I figured that tying them off tightly and leaving them pretty long, so they wouldn’t come undone, was a good plan, but it was not. Any time I move this cushion, a new, unfinished end (often a sad, stringy little one) seems to pop out of nowhere, so I spend most of my time these days poking them back in to the back of the fabric. Sigh. If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions…

Final Thoughts

Okay, so I’m not thrilled with how this cushion turned out, but I still like it. I guess I just think that I could do better if I gave it another go (and as I am writing this I am having to physically restrain myself from ordering a different, fluffy yarn and trying again). Maybe if I consider this a prototype, I’ll feel better about it?

It’s not all negative though— this cushion is super soft, fluffy and festive. It’s very huggable, perhaps because it is so soft and fluffy? It was also so quick and easy to make— the pattern is so simple, but it’s also really effective! I whipped this up in no time at all (so I could make another one in no time at all too… right?).

If I did make this again, I’d definitely try and scope out a different yarn— I love the fluff of this one, but, let me tell you, I was not loving it when I was lint-rolling myself for the fifth time in a single day to remove the rather spooky-looking red fluff balls from my whole body. I also really just didn’t enjoy working with it and I think I may have developed a fear of chenille now (chenillophobia?).

Also… I’d love to see if this pattern would work with double crochets, instead of trebles? I think part of the reason the fabric is so open is because of the use of trebles, so even if I made my gauge super tight by using a really small hook, I’d still run into problems. If the pattern worked with double crochets, I could probably get away with keeping the yarn floats at the back, so I’d get the clean look I wanted, plus I’d be able to darn in the ends more easily (or, at least, there’d be fewer holes for them to poke through!). Admittedly, it would make the project much less speedy to whip up, but I’d still be interested to try it! (Oh no, I think I’ve basically convinced myself now…).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post! Posting about projects I’m not 100% happy with is something I still struggle with, but I do think it’s important to share all of the aspects of the crafty life, not just the highlights!

If you're interested...

You can find the Peppermint Swirl Pillow pattern by the Red Heart Design Team here.

You can find the Peppermint Swirl Pillow pattern on Ravelry here.

You can find my Peppermint Swirl Cushion project page on Ravelry here.

Gemma

xxx