The 10 Minute Cushion

I thought another tutorial might as well be posted since I have made this today. I know my blog seems very sewing orientated at the moment, with the quilt on the go and my random little projects, however, there will probably be a massive gap where I do none at all- I am quite prone to fads in my projects really.

Anyway, this is such a simple way to make a cushion that it can be done in 10 minutes. I bought a cushion insert and some fabric when I was in Ikea, uni shopping with my friend (I just picked up a fabric she said she liked) and it will be a cushion for her, to accompany her quilt.

Start by measuring your cushion. You want the length of the fabric to be 2 and a half times the length of your cushion. For example, for a 50cm cushion, you will need 125cm of fabric. Then mark off the width and allow about 3cm extra when drawing the 'cutting line' on your fabric.Then cut the fabric to this long rectangular shape.

Next up, neaten the two shorter ends, by hemming them. Fold over about 1cm of fabric and sewing (with a sewing machine is best, as it will be stronger, but it can easily be done by hand), along it.

The next part is folding your cushion. You need to make 2 folds.
1) Start with your fabric design side up, measure 25cm (using the 50cm cushion example again, so half the length of your cushion) from one end and 50cm from the other end.
2)You now want to, fold in the ‘flap’ of 25cm (or whatever the ‘half’ length of your cushion is), the back of the fabric should now be facing you.
3)Then fold the other end of the fabric over itself, so the end will now sit on the fold at the other end. This should mean the fabric in front of you is 50cm in length now.
The image below shows the 3 steps, so click it to enlarge if you need to.

Your fabric should now look like this (this is the back of the fabric, it is just a bright one that the design shows through). As you can see, the flap is folded over inside.

Now, simply pin up the edges of the fabric and sew along them. You should now have your complete cushion, just inside out.

As you can see, here is the fold over flap, before we turn the case the right way around:

Now, turn the case the right way around:

Put your cushion insert in:

Next, tuck the flap over the top (like on the inside of a pillowcase), and you should have something that looks like this:

 

As you can see, the flap just sits there. You can secure it with a button or suchlike if you wish, but it is fine just left as seen above. This one piece design with the external flap means that it is easy to remove the cover to wash whenever you wish, as well as being an extra quick way to make your cushions.

There we go :)