“My right hand shakes now. These 186 cushions are the last thing I’ll ever make.” — Why a seventy-two-year-old Tasmanian grazier’s wife is letting her last hand-stitched animal cushions go at a special price, before her hand gives out for good.

Every night after tea, Merle Kerslake walks across the yard to the old shearers’ cookhouse and lights the little pot-belly stove. She puts the ABC on low. Outside, the frost is settling on the fence wire and the sheep are moving in the dark paddock. Then she sits down at the big jarrah table and picks up a needle.

On the table there is usually a sheep. Or a shaggy Highland cow with her calf. Not knitted, not printed. Built up out of real wool, layer by layer, so the fleece stands up off the cushion and you want to put your hand on it.

Merle is 72. For 47 years she has lived on a merino sheep property outside Ross, in the flat gold country of the Tasmanian Midlands. Her husband Barry died in 2020. Their son Craig runs the sheep now.

“Everyone pats them. Even the shearers. Especially the shearers. They pretend they’re checking the stitching.”

A broken leg, a missed shearing and a little boy who cried every morning

It started in the winter of 1982. Merle’s son Craig, who was six, fell off the hay stack and broke his leg. He spent the whole of shearing in bed in a plaster cast.

Every morning he watched the mob go past his window to the shed. And every morning he cried, because he wasn’t allowed to go.

So Merle took a handful of fleece off the shearing board, washed it in the laundry tub and stitched him three merino ewes onto an old cushion. “So you’ve got the sheep in bed with you,” she told him. Craig is 50 now. That first cushion still rides on the back seat of his ute, worn flat at one corner.

“I made three sheep so a little boy wouldn’t miss shearing. Forty-four years later I’m still making them.”

The old sandstone cookhouse where 3,400 cushions came to life

The cookhouse once fed the shearing team. It has sandstone walls and a timber floor worn smooth by a hundred years of boots. Barry put the pot-belly in for her in 1986, “so I’d stop sewing in my coat and beanie.” There are wool bales cut open and sorted by colour, a biscuit tin of needles and her mother’s silver thimble.

One cushion takes her about ten hours. First the shape of the animal is drawn on the cloth. Then the wool goes on from behind, a little at a time, until the fleece rises. Then hundreds of tiny stitches hold it all in place. The black faces of the sheep are the slowest part.

Since 1982 she has made about 3,400 of them. Most were sold from a trestle table at the Campbell Town Show every June, and at the Sunday market in Evandale. Mums who bought a sheep for their baby in the eighties now come back for their grandkids.

Four animals from one Tasmanian back road

Merle has only ever made four designs. Every one of them lives within a few kilometres of her back door.

• Sheep Trio: Her own merino mob in the paddock outside the cookhouse window. The first design, and the one she has made most.
• Highland Cow & Calf: The shaggy cattle a neighbour keeps on the back paddock. At the show, kids always asked for “the hairy cow.”
• Alpaca Trio: An alpaca farm opened down the road near Longford in 2008. Her grandkids went every school holidays, so she made the first one for her granddaughter’s bedroom.
• Llama Trio: The brown, white and fawn llamas a friend runs with her ewes at lambing time.

What 44 years taught her about a cushion

People who order one of Merle’s cushions usually say the same thing when it arrives: “I didn’t expect to be able to feel it.” That was never an accident.

• “The Raised-Merino Relief”: The wool is built up from behind in layers, so each animal stands about a centimetre off the cushion. “A sheep should feel like a sheep,” Merle says. “Not like a photo of one.”
• “The Eleven-Stitch Inch”: About eleven small stitches to every inch, all set by hand. “That’s what keeps the wool on when a toddler drags it round the house for five years.”
• “The Linen Ground”: A heavy, natural linen-look cloth underneath that holds the shape and doesn’t sag, even with the dog asleep on it.
• “The Hidden-Zip Fit”: A zip tucked away along the bottom edge. The cover fits a standard 45 cm (18-inch) cushion insert, so you can swap it or wash it in a minute.

The lamb’s eye she sewed onto its cheek

What Merle will miss most are the nights. The pot-belly ticking. The radio low. A new animal slowly coming up under her fingers while the frost comes down outside.

Two years ago a shake started in her right hand. The specialist in Launceston told her it is a tremor, and it will not get better. She can still drive the ute and feed the dogs. But a black thread on a black sheep’s face, eleven stitches to the inch, needs a hand that holds still.

“I sewed a lamb’s eye onto its cheek last month. Unpicked it three times. I’ve never done that in my life.”

So this spring she put the needle down. Her daughter Leanne doesn’t sew, and nobody else in the Midlands makes them. What is left in the cookhouse is all there will ever be: 186 cushion covers, across all four designs.

“What’s the use of a sheep you can’t lean on?”

A few years ago, a gallery at Salamanca Place in Hobart sold five of Merle’s cushions for $420 each. She hated it. “They hung them on the wall with little cards underneath. You weren’t allowed to touch them.”

At the Campbell Town Show she always charged what a family could manage. For her last 186 she is doing the same: a small fraction of what the gallery asked. She could ask far more. She won’t.

“I’d rather a hundred families use one than one collector hang it on a wall.”

She wants them on couches and in kids’ bedrooms. With the dog asleep on the Highland cow. Worn soft at the corners, like Craig’s.

Merle doesn’t own a computer. Her granddaughter Brooke, a vet nurse in Launceston, kept getting messages from people who used to buy at the show and couldn’t get there any more. So Brooke photographed every cushion on the cookhouse table and set up the page where you can order now.

“Brooke does the computer. I do the wool. That’s the deal.”

What people across Australia say about Merle’s cushions

• ★★★★★

  “I wasn’t ready for how much the wool stands up. My husband walked past and patted the sheep without even thinking. It’s on his chair now, not mine.”

  Lynette P., Ballarat
• ★★★★★

  “Bought the alpacas for my granddaughter’s room. She’s named all three and won’t sleep without them. It has already been through the wash twice and looks the same.”

  Kerry A., Toowoomba
• ★★★★★

  “The Highland cow came wrapped in brown paper with a handwritten card. I grew up on a sheep place near Goulburn, and it made me a bit teary, I’ll be honest.”

  Denise H., Canberra

Three questions people ask before ordering

Where can I buy one of Merle’s cushions?

Only through this page. Merle’s cushions are not sold on Amazon, Temu or in any shop.

How long will they be available?

Only while stocks last. Merle has put her needle down for good, and there are 186 cushion covers left across all four designs. Once a design is gone, it is gone.

What if it’s not right for me?

You have 30 days to try it at home. If you’re not happy, just send a short email and you’ll get your money back. No questions, no fuss.

More from people who brought one home

• ★★★★★

  “Ordered the sheep, then went straight back for the llamas. The zip is hidden so well you can’t see it on the couch. Lovely heavy cloth.”

  Robyn S., Launceston
• ★★★★★

  “Our kelpie has claimed the Highland cow. He sleeps with his head on it every arvo. Not a single stitch has come loose.”

  Graham T., Bendigo
• ★★★★★

  “Gave one to my mum, who is 88 and ran sheep near Dubbo all her life. She held it on her lap the whole afternoon. Worth every cent.”

  Sharon M., Newcastle