A Stitched Message

Over the past couple of weeks I started sewing something for someone who was going through a bit of a tough time health wise. I thought greeting cards or flowers were boring, and I wanted to make something while we were waiting to hear about test results and surgery to keep my hands busy and my mind off the waiting! I wasn't able to do a whole lot of sewing, just a bit here and there mainly when I couldn't concentrate on study.
I didn't really know what I was going to make. I thought maybe I'd make a fabric card, or a postcard at first, but then it evolved.
I pulled various bits of scrap fabric out that I had kept from other projects because of the floral patterns. I always figured the flowers would be useful as appliques or even as inspiration for embroidery one day.
So I fiddled around cutting out the various flowers in all sorts of combinations then ironed them onto some gingham using the fusible webbing stuff.

I thought ok, I have a roll of the batting in my cupboard so I sandwiched it between two pieces of yellow gingham and I pulled out the darning foot for the machine, dropped the feed-dog and stitched around and around the flowers using red and yellow, orange, blue and pink threads. I really like how the in-between bits puffed up between the rows of stitch.
I then decided to write a message on a second piece of gingham, batting and gingham sandwiched.
At this stage I still wasn't sure if I was making a fabric card!
I hand wrote the message using the fabric pen and then used the same coloured threads from the flower side to stitch over the words and a fabric heart.
Then came a binding nightmare involving me, an iron and the #$%^& binding tool that didn't work!...and eventually just became my scorched fingers folding, holding ironing.

I stitched the binding all the way around the front, flowered panel first, then sandwiched the back panel on, realising it looked like an oven mitt, I decided it was now going to be a pillow instead!

I stitched almost all the way around the back of the binding leaving it attached to the machine with the needle down, while I quickly filled the inside with stuffing, then continued the stitch along the binding.

I quickly snapped these pics with my phone before it went off to deliver it's message and hopefully cheer someone's day.