Popcorn stitch flower and sunburst granny square cushion cover

For the past two weeks, I have been working on granny squares (popcorn stitch flowers, solid granny squares, sunburst granny squares). I had wanted to turn the pieces into cushion cover. So I made the front piece with popcorn stitch flowers. As for the back piece, I combined both sunburst and solid granny squares.

Front piece

Initial back piece with solid granny squares ('X')

I looked up on different granny squares joining methods on YouTube and this tutorial caught my eye. Most people call this joining method the 'flat-braid' join. Although this joining method is really pretty, you have to keep removing your loop from your hook while joining. Just when I was ready to join both front and back pieces together, I realized that the back piece was much bigger than the front. I tried to think of a solution but eventually did a major clean-up, i.e. to remove the joining stitches, replace the solid granny squares with new sunburst granny squares and re-do the background stitches for the sunburst granny squares. Sounds really stupid and a waste of effort indeed. But I could not think of any other better ways than this. Well, hopefully, I will be smarter in future. I am glad that this project has come to a closure. Here is the final product:

Front cover

Back cover

Close-up view on popcorn stitch flower 

Close-up view on sunburst granny square

Attached buttons in one of the loops from flat-braid join

I joined the front and back pieces by doing:

1) a single crochet (sc) on the chain 3 space 

2) chain 3 (ch 3)

along the edges of the flat-braid joins. For the edging, I added pom pom edging to give it a cheerful look. This tutorial gives a good explanation on how to go about doing it.

Yay, time for a new project...