Cushiony Goodness

For many years there has been, in our house, a cushion with a picture of an elephant hand-embroidered on it whose exact provenance is unknown to me.  Recently, not least as a result of living in the bedroom of a small girl, this is what it looked like:

Yes, that's green felt tip you can see on the cushion itself

Small Girl was, needless to say, somewhat upset by its current state, so I agreed to see what I could do to rescue it.  Electing to focus on salvaging the elephant itself and not worry about the border, I first attacked the cushion cover with scissors.  There were a few small holes in the fabric within the boundaries of the elephant, so I strengthened them with mending tape before putting a layer of interfacing across the whole of the back:

There's felt tip on here too, but it's not so easy to see

The tail, sadly, got a little caught by the fray monster but the rest was rescued reasonably intact.  The next step was to see about transferring it to a new cushion cover.  I gave Small Girl the choice between having something in a matching colour or going for a contrast; she elected for the contrast and requested her favourite colour (blue).  Blue fabric was duly procured and cut to size, and I applied a further layer of interfacing to the reverse of the piece earmarked for the elephant (better safe than sorry).  The elephant was pinned in place, then sewn on using a very short zigzag stitch to cover the edges.  It'll never be the strongest of pieces, but fingers crossed it'll last a while longer now.

Once the elephant was attached, it was a simple enough matter to run round the sides and put in a zip.  Hey presto!  One finished cushion:

I thought I was going to catch the edges of the elephant more than I did

That's not the only cushion I've made recently, either.  For Christmas I got a cross-stitch kit for embroidering a cushion cover in a rather striking design.  Hand-stitching that took the best part of a month, then while I was out buying blue fabric for the elephant I also picked up some different fabric to make the cross-stitich cushion cover, plus a second one so the sofa won't overbalance:

Avast, ye LuBBers!

The skull-and-crossbones cushion is the same yellow on the other side, so when civilised guests come around we can have a smart matching pair on display.  With less civilised company, or if we see a fat Spanish sofa weighted down with gold doubloons, we can hoist our true colours and attack.  These were, again, simple enough to make although stitching through all that canvas and wool took some effort.

Now, if someone could just explain to me: what are they for?!