It’s funny how things start to snowball when you’re decorating. You make one change, and then three others follow it. I had intended on only re-painting the living room and adjoining dining room, and then I decided to make new curtains (Finished them up this weekend! Post soon!). And then came addressing this bench situation. And now I’m thinking I’d love some new lamps. Anyway, I digress. This is the story of the bench.
At some point I realized these two pillows fit perfectly along the back of the bench and turned it into a mini settee or something. But of course, the fabrics totally didn’t go together. And it sat this way for a very long time.
My loose plan has been to recover the cushion and the pillows in the same fabric, but it just did not sound like a fun project at all. The last time I made a slipcover for this cushion, I way over-complicated things. I created a box-style cover and added a zipper. It wasn’t terrible, but I tried so hard and it was still wonky on the corners. That left a sour taste in my mouth. This time around, I decided to make it as simple and uncomplicated as possible. No zippers, no piecing, no nothing. If it was going to be imperfect anyway, I shouldn’t spend a lot of time and effort on it.
A couple of years ago, then I picked up a two-yard remnant of Thomas Paul Dahlia fabric for just $10. I knew it was an expensive fabric (like $28/yard), so I snatched it up. And lucky for me, two yards was just enough to cover everything.
I cut a rectangle of fabric big enough to wrap around the cushion, but I had to be strategic about the direction so that I could fit everything in. I hemmed the edges that would later be the envelope style openings and then wrapped the cushion like a present.
Then I pinned the ends, and squeezed out the cushion out through the envelope opening, and sewed closed the two open sides.
I double stitched the edges and back-stitched heavily along the openings to reinforce them. Hopefully that will keep the stitches from splitting when wrestling the cover onto the cushion.
The sides of the cushion actually turned out pretty tidy, a whole lot neater than the previous incarnation of this slipcover.
The next step was covering the two pillows. I did that in the exact same way, giving them the same envelope closure style back as the bench cushion. No buttons.
I think all in all, this entire project probably took me 3-4 hours, stopping and starting to retrieve snacks and toys and such. I feel like I always say this, but I really shouldn’t have put it off so long.
