Have sewing machine, will sew.

I've been going a little cushion crazy this week - I made a foam one with piping for a bench, and another for a rocking chair and a matching toss pillow to go with this one.

We bought this storage bench a while ago from Craig's list for our hallway

and also this rocking chair from a charity shop for one of the bedrooms

and ever since, they've both been needing seat cushions.

The bench was evidently smaller than the average bench as the only ones I could find to fit were for kids toy chests with yacky material and a steep prince tag ... Then I found this amazing tutorial from Pretty Handy Girl via CSI project for a piped bench cushion so I went about making one instead.

The tutorial is really clear and detailed so I'm not going to repeat it step by step but here are the main steps and materials:

2" foam to fit
Carving knife
Batting to cover foam twice
Fabric
Piping (about 6 yards in all)
Sewing machine
Pins

I cut the foam to size using a bread knife - I've read that an electric carving knife is good for this too but I don't have one of these. I found that just pulling the knife backwards rather than in a sawing motion helped make a much cleaner cut. I then wrapped the batting around to cover each side twice and secure with tape temporarily to stop it from unrolling whilst making the cushion.

The I cut all 7 pieces of fabric (6 sides and an extra piece for the back flap) with around 1.5" excess for hemming and placed over the cushion and pinned

Then ironed and sewed along the lines to make a guide to follow for the piping

I actually found the piping rather difficult to deal with - it had a tiny hem of 1/4 inch so not much to grab hold of and too small to both pin and machine sew so I just had to hold it in place which made for a wonky seam in places.

The back is an envelope fastening so there are two pieces that overlap - one sewn to top and sides and one to the bottom only. This is secured with velcro so the cushion cover can be changed.

And that is that. I'm a beginner sewer so I found this challenging but very doable.

I'm contemplating stenciling the fabric to make it a bit less ...well beige...will keep you posted

and since I'd now got the hang of it, I then made a smaller one for the rocking chair with gorgeous but cheapo remnant fabric. Same basic method but I added rounded edges for the back corners and little tie tassles at the back too 

Then I was really on a roll. I had some leftover fabric from making this union jack cushion so did a quickie stars and stripes one to match...

Sophie