Making a 'Stockholm' Needlepoint Cushion

Hi, Happy holiday time! Where do the weeks go? Actually over here, it has gone in many hours of stitching in the last few weeks. I am so thrilled to be able to show you the final result and somehow it seems a wonderfully cheerful project for the beginning of Spring.

A couple of years ago, my daughter gave me this beautiful kit from Hannah Bass for Christmas. I was thrilled with it, as we had lived in Stockholm for 3 years before returning to England and it was a great way to add a little Scandi flavour into our home. At the time I was in the middle of another needlepoint project, so it duly lined up in the queue in my sewing room. In the intervening time, we moved house and everything was up in the air (or rather in storage) for months and months and finally we landed here in Kent in August of last year. It was chaos, downsizing and we were overwhelmed with boxes and unpacking and endless decisions about what to do with stuff and hardly any sewing got done in the whole of 2025. Now I am back in business in my sewing room, but it is a smaller space than I had before and the need to sort things out was important. I can tell you that I uncovered quite a few things that I thought had long been lost and it has been a great exercise in being organised and prioritising things. This kit was top of my list.

So, I began to work on it, starting at the bottom edge and with the letters. After not too long, I could see how it would get distorted if I just worked on it as it was, so I managed to find my tapestry frame and took the time to properly fix the canvas on so that it was taught and straight.

I fairly quickly realised that there was ALOT of blue to stitch. It was quite a job, but that is how Stockholm is and what I did love, was that as I was working on it, I began to identify the buildings and layout of the city waterfront. It is an incredibly beautiful place and we had a fantastic time living there so it started to become a meaningful and interesting project. I am not going to lie though, I did get quite exhausted with the blue and needed audio books and tea and cake to pass the time.

Needlepoint is not a difficult form of embroidery and is actually very mediative. The colours on the kit were so bright and vibrant and as you build the design, that lovely feel of something hardwearing and enduring starts to creep in. It is no wonder that tapestries are some of the oldest surviving textiles in the world, because as you weave the stitches, the wool forms a carpet like fabric and you just know it is forever.

As the tide started to rise towards the mainland, I felt that I would be very relieved to be ashore. Swimming in an endless sea of blue, even despite the colourful archipelago, with only my needle to keep me afloat made me feel a little cast away. Riding the crest of a wave, I was so looking forward to languishing in all those blocks of delicious colour ahead.

Once I was safely on land, it was really a joy and very addictive to fill in all the little streets and building blocks. It went much quicker…and this was partly due to the most amazing audio book that I was listening to called ‘All that she carried’ by Tiya Miles. This book is the most astonishing story of simple cotton sack, with a few words of embroidery on that was found by chance at a flea market sale in Tennessee in 2007. Dating from the 1850’s, it details the contents that were placed in the sack when an enslaved mother and her young daughter, Ashley were brutally separated by the ‘Planter’s’ world that they lived in. The mother put three things into the sack for her 9 year old little girl to take with her, knowing that she may never see her again. The sack was later passed to her granddaughter who embroidered the story on to the sack. It is a fantastic book about not only the shocking world of slaves in South, but of how a few simple words and textiles can carry a story forward for over a hundred years. This sack, after much studying and analysing is now on display at the Smithsonian Museum. I may never get to see it, but the book is so beautifully written that it made me realise just how magical words and fabric can be and how story cloths can tell history, both social and emotional forward for future generations. My needlepoint cushion has only one word on it, but it is a beginning of delving into new ideas for embroidery.

When it was finished, I realised how much the frame had helped in keeping it straight and neat and honestly, when I put my needle down, I was just amazed I had completed it. It really is a very lovely thing.

I decided to order the velvet backing from Hannah Bass as I felt it needed that luxurious touch to make it something really special. There are lots of colours to choose from and it comes ready cut to the right size. I bought some black pompom trim from my local store and a recycled zip too and felt the black accents would compliment the piece as well as being rather ‘Stockholm’ in style.

As I had the narrow pompom edging I decided to stitch that on first. It was a bit tricky but I used a zipper foot on my machine and an awl to gradually hold down the flat edge of the trim, a little at a time. I crawled along with the machine, but I could make sure that it was on the edge of the needlepoint. The zip went in to the backing around 3 inches up from the bottom and although, I hate working with velvet, it was straight forward enough.

Putting the backing on top was also a bit challenging because it is quite thick and the bobble edging raised the edge up. It was definitely a case of ‘easy does it’. It was a ‘TA DA’ moment when it was done.

It is utterly gorgeous and I am over the moon with it. It was a lot of work, but completely worth it. I know this will stand the test of time and be forever on a sofa in my family. It has a wonderfully warm feeling about it and has the look of a job well done, if I say so myself.

Hannah Bass has some wonderful kits on her website and many more city map ones. I will definitely be tempted in the future. For now though I am just going to sit back and enjoy this.

You can read about other needlepoint projects that I have made by clicking on the menu on the journal page - there is a heading ‘needlepoint’. I am switching up to silk embroidery next and text will be a part of it, so I hope you will pop back soon. Meanwhile, don’t eat too many eggs….Happy Easter!

PS. I really recommend the book about Ashley’s sack. Here is a newspaper article in the Guardian that gives some more insight into the story.