A Comfy Cushion

I found a lovely rocking chair at a garage sale a couple of weeks back.  It's quite comfortable, but if you want to sit for a significant amount of time, a wood seat can begin to feel a little hard.  So a cushion was in order!

I looked around for a tutorial to make sure I wasn’t going to miss anything important.  This one was particularly helpful, although I made a few changes to suit my needs.

The supplies I used were as follows:

Quilting Cotton

Fusible Interfacing

Yarn Scrap (for piping)

Covered Button Kit

Button & Carpet Thread (for tufting)

PolyFil (for stuffing)

And best of all, everything I needed was in the stash.  There was not quite enough poly-fil stuffing left in the bag to completely stuff the cushion, so I used some scraps of polyester fleece to fill out the remaining bit, and it worked beautifully!  The fleece was purchased years ago with the thought that it would be an inexpensive way to make shoulder pads - big mistake - cotton batting is far superior, and so it was nice to find a use for the gross polyester stuff.  By the way, does anyone know why JoAnns fills its stores with fleece?  Someone must be buying it, right?  But who, exactly - I never see anyone in those aisles.  Inquiring minds want to know.

But back to the cushion . . . I would say the most important features to make a hand made cushion look good are piping, and buttons for tufting.  Otherwise, you are going to have a rather sad looking stuffed square.

The piping on this particular project could probably stand to be a bit wider, but even a narrow option adds something.  And if you are going to add tufting, make sure to interface your fabric at those spots.  I interfaced the entire front and back of my cushions because the quilting cotton was not especially sturdy, but if you are planning to pull a length of thread through a mass of stuffing and pull it tight, you will definitely need to reinforce that area so the fabric does not tear.

I also added four sets of ties, two at the back corners, and the two others a few inches in the from the opposite corners to match the forward most spindles of the chair.

I was expecting this to be a practice run, but I really love how it turned out.  So for now, I am going to keep my lily pad cushion on my lovely new rocking chair!

Dogwood Blossoms

I wanted to make myself some lovely linen separates in a solid color.  That didn’t happen - mostly because a skirt like this takes so much darn fabric and I didn’t want to purchase anything new.  Hello, sewing room crammed to the rafters with fabric.

But I did have this lovely dogwood quilting cotton print.

And so I made the idea work with a print.

I would not be averse to making this up again in a solid, should the right fabric come along . . .

But for now, I am quite pleased to run around in the heat in this cool cotton combo.

I have already worn the skirt paired with a vintage eyelet blouse, and I suspect the Smooth Sailing Blouse will also come in handy paired with any number of separates (a denim skirt, for example).

So I am going to call this project a success!

I am currently feeling somewhat disappointed over all of the summer sewing projects I did not manage to get done, and the weather is definitely beginning to turn.  Then again, it will be nice to pull some wool out of the stash.  So do I try to finish one or two more warm weather wearables, or do I head into Fall a bit early?  Only time will tell . . .  And those knitting needles are calling my name, so how is that for a distraction!