New Cushion Covers

A friend got a real find at our local thrift store.  She scored several yards of beautiful drapery material and wondered if I could make new cushion covers for her. She was fine with whatever closure I was able to manage.

The first thing I did was to take one of the old covers off and "liberate" the zipper from it.  Time to use the lovely seam ripper that hubby made me!  I measured the old cushion cover and cut the front and back of the new cover 22" square and allowed .5" seam allowance.

My first attempt at installing the zipper was how I'd done them in lined zipper bags.  But I didn't like the look and ripped out the zipper. 

Then I used a lint roller to catch up all the little bits of thread - you need one of these in your sewing kit!

I finally decided to sew a .5" seam down one side of the squares.  I measured off 2" at each end and marked them with green-headed pins.  Yellow headed pins denoted where I'd sew a basting stitch.  I used a 2.5 stitch length for the first 2", cut the thread and then stitched 4.0 to the other green pin, cut the thread and finally stitched 2.5 to the end.  Where the stitching line came to the basting stitch, I doubled back to secure the ends.  I pressed the seam open.

I laid the zipper out on the seam with the zipper teeth directly over the stitching line.  I used green-headed pins at each end of the basting stitch.  Zipper foot on the sewing machine, I stitched down one side of the zipper to just past the green-headed pin.

Then I turned 90 degrees, stitched over the zipper teeth (no problem on nylon teeth!), did another 90 degrees and then stitched up the other side of the zipper.  I used the seam ripper to take out the basting stitch and now I was ready to finish sewing the cover.  And it's important at this point to open the zipper so that you'll be able to turn the cover right side out!

I folded the cover right sides together and pinned.  I stitched down one side, across the bottom and up the final side.  I clipped the two bottom corners to make turning easier.

Now all I had to do was to stuff the cushions in their new covers and admire how nice they looked!  Including ripping out the old zippers, cutting the fabric, back-tracking on zipper installation and finally finishing the covers, it only took me a couple of hours and now my friend has 3 lovely new cushions.

And now that I know how easy it is, I'm going to re-do some of my own cushion covers!