I wanted to make some nice festive cushion covers for our sofa this year. My original plan was to make some kind of precision pieced ones, but I just haven’t been able to find any Christmas fabric I liked. So time was running out!
But then I thought I could maybe find some festive tea towels and make the covers from those. Luckily Tesco had these cheerful ones with both a cross stitch and a Scandi feel to them. Result!
They come in a pair (red + white together), so I bought two sets to have enough for our three cushions. Our living room is kinda dark, so I decided to use 2 whites and a red for the cushions.
First I trimmed off the seams and then I measured the tea towels. I knew they wouldn’t be large enough to wrap around the cushions completely, so I cut a bit of contrasting fabric to make up for the difference.
I sewed the two sections together with two short side seams at what would be the middle (ish) of the cover, leaving an opening to be able to insert the cushion. I was going to use zips for the openings but it turned out I didn’t have enough of the right size.
Sooo.. improvising! I had a rummage through my big hoard small collection of pretty ribbons and found enough to make some ties. It was really simple to do, but quite time consuming because I had to hem the ends of the ribbons so they won’t unravel. So fiddly!
Once I’d sewn the ribbons to the edges of the opening, I turned the cover right side in and sewed all around the sides and attaching the other end of the contrasting fabric. I had left plenty of seam allowance, so before trimming that, I tested the cover with the cushion. I had to adjust it a bit, to make the cover slightly smaller, but that was quickly done and I could trim off the excess seam allowance.
Making the other two to the right size was a lot quicker after that because I has a template in the first cover.
I’m really happy with how these turned out although I wasn’t able to do exactly what I had planned! And it’s a happy accident that now I kinda have two sides I can use, because the ribbon looks quite lovely too. :-)