Friendly Wave Quilted Cushion

Sometimes vague ideas stay in my head for a long time before I figure out how I can translate the thought into a quilt design. This little cushion is one example of that, so I'm excited that now I get to mark it as a finish. Meet Friendly Wave, the Stash Artists Mini of the Month pattern for August.

I've been wanting to make something with a whale on it for years. Then, when I was first thinking about doing a Mini of the Month series in the Stash Artists membership for 2026, I made a list of all the possible themes/ideas those minis could explore and I added 'a whale quilt' to the list. That rattled around for a while before the idea of a strippy background made the whole thing start coming together.

If you want to make a Friendly Wave cushion, too, join us in Stash Artists! When you join, you'll get access to the full library of scrappy and stash-friendly patterns, including Friendly Wave and so many more.

Stitching my background together meant I could use some of the long strips of blue fabric that have been trimmed off quilt backs after quilting. Nowhere near all of them, of course, but it was a great way to use up some of them! I cut my strips anywhere from ¾" to 1 ¼" so I could get the maximum number of scrappy strips into my 16" cushion.

I probably should have used slightly lighter blues for the 'water' portion of the cushion, to help the whale stand out a little better, but I didn't think of that until after it was all pieced. When choosing the fabrics, I was more focused on making sure there was a lot of contrast between the water and the sky, so I had a moment of panic when I realized the dark grey tone-on-tone print I wanted to use for the whale was going to disappear more than I wanted. Fortunately, using lighter grey thread (Aurifil 2600) to quilt/stitch down the edge of the appliqué made it a lot more visible.

Real whale flukes (that's the proper name for their tails) have lots of bumps and ridges along the edge, so I replicated that as well as I could without making it too hard to cut out. I'm really pleased with the effect!

As usual, I had fun with the quilting. First, I stitched all around the whale several times to create a nice, thick line. When I'm stitching around appliqué shapes like this, I intentionally don't try to stitch exactly on top of the previous lines. That way the wobbles end up looking like they were supposed to happen, because they were! I don't know about you, but I could never stitch perfectly around an outline even once, let alone three times, so making the wobbles an intentional part of the design makes the process a lot more relaxing.

After the whale was stitched, I used the same Aurifil 2600 to stitch some splash detail where the tail is coming out of the water. I pretty much just scribbled elongated, overlapping figure-eights until it looked right.

For the water, I used Aurifil 2785 to quilt random, overlapping, wavy lines from side to side. This took the most time, but still didn't take long since it's such a small piece.

The clouds in the sky portion were Paul's idea. Random is hard! Did I quilt enough clouds? Are they close enough...far apart enough...properly cloud-shaped? 😅 After quilting a few, I told myself they were good enough and left it at that!

I put my cushion together with an envelope backing, which is the only method I've ever used for a cushion. For some reason, I can never remember which way to layer the pieces so the backing piece on the outside will be the one on the top, and this time I got it wrong. It looks so weird to me that the outside piece is on the bottom, like the cushion is upside down. It doesn't bother me enough that I took it apart to redo it, though!

A whale cushion definitely has to go to the beach for its photo shoot! Unfortunately, no real whales came to visit while we were there.

And thanks to Yvonne of Quilting Jetgirl, I've been trying to remember to take pictures of myself with my makes more often. The sun was really bright, so I'm squinting, but here's me and my Friendly Wave cushion 😊

We're not 'cushions on the couch' people, which is why I rarely make cushions. But at Christmas I had my Stay Cozy cushion displayed in our entryway, at the base of this table I made in shop class in junior high. After the Christmas decorations were put away, I decided the space needed a cushion for the rest of the year, too, and now Friendly Wave looks perfect there.

Dad carved the fabulous wood sprite sitting on the table. He also named this pattern, after I put a couple of options in the family group chat asking for opinions and he immediately chimed in with Friendly Wave. Apparently I need to get his help naming patterns more often!

Remember, you can join us in Stash Artists to get the Friendly Wave pattern and lots of other scrappy, stash-friendly patterns, along with monthly sewing sessions and more. We'd love to have you join us!