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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Guest Post - Fabulous Cushions!

I'm very excited to have my very first guest-poster!

Let me introduce Devon:



 


Isn't she awesome?? Here she is on Christmas Eve, ironing and bourbon'ing. In a cocktail dress.
That's just how she rolls. We solidified our friendship over sewing our Halloween costumes and accessories.

She put together some cushions recently and I asked her if she'd be willing to guest post while I frantically get the zipper installed for the Mad Men Dress. Home stretch! I'll let Devon captain the ship from here!

Hello, campers! Christina asked me to share a recent adventure in slipcovers with you.

I don't have a couch, and I was expecting a pile of people over for a party. To mix up seating, I thought I'd make some floor cushions. I got three pieces of pre-cut 2" foam, and a yard of 3" by-the-yard foam at JoAnn's (on sale- which they cut with an electric bread knife!), and I got the fabric at Ikea. It's a fully-printed cotton blend, so it ended up being quite heavy, and I sewed with basic black polyester thread.

I measured my foam and added a 1/2" seam allowance. I decided to just do a flap closure, instead of messing around with zippers, so I added a few inches to one of the large sides of the cushion and separated it into two pieces. To keep track of things, I took notes for dimensions on an index card.

Cutting those big pieces was a bit of a challenge! I had more than enough fabric, so I generally cut with some room for trimming. Once I had all my pieces done, I drew seam allowances on the wrong sides with a chalk pencil. 
I also marked lengths of the side pieces for the smaller cushions, so I wouldn't accidentally mix up the 16" and 18" long strips.

Then I started sewing! I had to do a fair amount of tension adjusting on my machine from my previous project, since the thread was fine and the fabric quite thick, which I tested on a scrap piece of fabric.



I did the big cushion first since I figured it would take the most time. The three little ones were a breeze after that.

One thing I modified as I went was cutting out the corners. Since I squared off all my corners instead of using a long strip around all the skinny sides, I ended up with a lot of bulk. Trimming them made sewing easier, and made smoother boxy edges. A little tedious, but they came out well. I also didn't worry about matching all the corners perfectly; there was enough bulk remaining that I didn't have problems with holes.

All in all, I was quite pleased, and guests found them cozy!














Thanks, Devon! I hope to be back later this week with my finished Mad Men Dress and a post about some supplies I have received. Oh okay, I will give you a preview:


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