Scrappy Chair Cushion

Hello! It has been forever since I made a post. I have been sewing, knitting and crocheting all winter though, so I am going to try and post what I’ve been up to.

Yesterday I wanted to try a scrap busting project, but I wanted it to be something I’ll actually  use. After browsing Pinterest for a while, I found these chair cushions. I used them for inspiration, but changed up the pattern a bit. In the tutorial I viewed, after making the cushion tops, they added a big foam block to the bottom, however I liked them without anything extra, and besides, I was trying to use up scraps, not go out and buy even more materials. Also, they added straps to tie the cushion to the chair, but in my experience, where the strap is attached to the cushion gets ripped from all the pulling, so, no straps on mine.

Click here to see the original tutorial, or keep scrolling for mine.

 

Materials

• Scrap fabric cut into 5″ x 5″ squares. For each cushion you will need 32 squares.
• Iron
• Sewing machine with zig zag stitch
• Ruler

Instructions

1. Pick out your scrap materials. I did not iron my pieces first, but I highly recommend it!

 

 

2. Cut out your squares. Each square should be 5″ by 5″. I used a rotary cutter and a hard edged ruler, however, you can use scissors, too.

 

3. This is when I ironed out my squares, but really I should have ironed the fabrics before I cut anything.

 

4. Here I organized my squares by colour, after they are all nicely ironed flat.

 

5. Match up squares in sets of two. I mostly kept the same fabric for each square, so the front and the back of the cushion will be the same. Here, you can also lay out the squares to determine how you want the cushion to look. I recommend taking a picture here so you can move the squares around without having to worry about where they belong after.

 

6. Arrange each set of squares so the good sides are together, then sew each set around the edge with a 1/4″ seam allowance. Leave a 1.5″ gap on the side so we can turn them right side out later. I chose to chain stitch here, where you do not cut one set before moving to the next set.

 

7. All chain stitched together!

 

8. Cut the threads connecting each set, and trim the corners of each set of squares, being careful not to cut the stitches.

 

9. Turn everything right side out.

 

10. Stuff each square. Try and get each square the same. I tried to fill each square medium –  firm.

 

11. Arrange all of the squares where you want them to be in the final cushion. I left the holes open here, but made sure none of the holes were pointing to the outside edge, and that two holes did not point to each other. If you look closely above, you can see the top left square has the opening pointing down, the black square is pointing right, the green square is pointing up and the yellow square is pointing left. I arranged each corner of four squares the same way.

 

12. To sew two squares together, first move the stuffing away from the seam and then pin it in place. Then, place the two squares together and sew down that seam with a zig zag stitch, making sure to get both edges and catching both sides of the opening.

 

13. Sew all of the squares in each row together the same way, so you will end up with four strips.

 

14. Now we have to sew two strips together. You can move the stuffing away from the seam and pin it in place for each square. Then zig zag the seam the same way as we did for each individual square. Make sure the seams line up. Repeat for the bottom two strips.

 

15. Last step! We have to sew the bottom to the top. Pin the stuffing away from the seam again, match up the seams and zig zag the two pieces together.

 

16. Finishing up the cushion.

 

17. The completed cushion. The reason I used a zig zag to sew the seams together instead of sewing them with a regular seam, with the right sides together is that I wanted the cushion to be reversible. However, I think if I had used regular seams it would have made the cushion fuller looking. The zig zag seams flattened out the cushion a little. If you decide to do a regular seam, you can still pin the stuffing out of the way and sew good sides of the squares together.

 

18. The cushion in action. Now I have to make another for my sewing machine’s chair as well. If you make any comment below with a picture. I would love to see!