Don’t you love it when random things inside your head suddenly join up?

Some stuff inside my head suddenly joined up the other day.

I love autumn. Actually I love all the seasons and I have a hard time picking which is my favourite, but autumn has an edge. The days are still warm enough to enjoy doing things out of doors but not so hot that you can’t move for sweating. The nights are drawing in, which makes it much easier to persuade young children to go to bed! And although we don’t really have beautiful autumns in the UK there is still lots of golden, red and brown.

So the other day, my love of autumn linked up with several other things. Firstly, with my cat Stripod. His beautiful ginger fur is the colour of autumn. And secondly, with the curtains in my front room. All the colours of autumn hanging in front of the windows when it is to dark to see them for real!

This realisation made me very happy!

The happiness made me want to make something. An obvious choice was a cushion.

I’d seen some beautiful fabric on Plush Addict, which is currently my favourite online fabric shop!

I couldn’t decide which one I like the most. Hurrah for patchwork, the perfect solution for the indecisive!

Here is the tutorial for my autumn patchwork cushion. If you don’t want to make the pattern yourself, you can buy one here for £2.

An Autumn Patchwork Cushion Tutorial

You Will Need: paper, pencil, ruler, cushion pad, self covering button, 1 fat quarter each of 5 different fabrics.

Making the Pattern

1. Draw a square the same size as your cushion. Greaseproof paper is good for this.

2. Draw a line diagonally from corner to corner.

3. Decide how many sections you would like for each half. I opted for 7 for the vertical patches and 5 for the horizontal. I wanted the bits to be big enough so that I could enjoy the patterns on the fabric, and generally odd numbers of things look better.

4. You will have to do some maths at this point. Measure the diagonal line and divide by 7 (or by however many sections you are planning on having). Mark off each section along the line. Starting at each mark you have made, draw lines at right angles to the diagonal line so that you end up with 7 sections.

5. On the other half of your square, draw a line from the centre of the diagonal line to the other corner. Measure this line and divide it by 5 (or by however many sections you have decided on). Draw straight lines that cut through the second line and run parallel with the first diagonal line.

6. Cut the bits out. It’s a good idea to number them first!

If you don’t want to faff about with all of that, you can buy a pdf version of the pattern for £2 here.

Making it Up

1. Cut out your fabric, remembering to leave a 1 cm seam allowance round each piece.

2. Decide which half of the cushion you are going to work on first. Sew the pieces together. Trim the seams and press them open.

3. Repeat for the other half.

4. Sew the 2 sections together. Trim the seam and press it open. That’s the front of the cushion done!

5. The cushion has an envelope back, which is thankfully nice and easy to do.

Cut 2 pieces of fabric the same width as your front piece and about 2/3 as long.

6. Hem each piece.

7. With the right sides together, place the top back piece on top of the front section so that the sides and top edge are aligned and the hemmed edge is somewhere in the middle. Put the bottom section on top of that, with the bottom and the sides aligned. Pin, then sew all the way round.

8. Trim the seams and cut the points off the corners. Turn it out and stuff the cushion pad inside.

9. Make the covered button. For full instructions for doing this, visit this tutorial.

10. Sew the button to the cushion. I sewed right through to the back of the cushion.

If you like it, you could try making a few in different fabrics. I just have a crazy mishmash of cushions in my front room!

Here is an Amazon linky for self covering buttons…

<br />

and another for a 45 cm cushion pad. These are affiliate links.

<br />

If you liked this post, you might also like these.

A Winter Patchwork Cushion Tutorial

Pinwheel Quilt Block Tutorial

Linking up here:

Inspire Me Monday

Show and Tell

Create, Link, Inspire

Skip The Housework Saturday

Here is a tutorial for a winter patchwork cushion.

In my previous post, I described the colour scheme I was planning to use for a winter themed project. You can read about that here!

This was photo I used to come up with the colour scheme……and these are the fabrics I chose based on the some of the colours in the picture.

The project I had planned was a cushion. In order to use different colours and fabrics, a patchwork cushion seemed like the best thing to do.

I wanted to keep it simple (I have a habit of not finishing things if they are too complicated!) so I came up with a design that uses horizontal lines, which also reflects the flat fenland countryside that inspired the cushion in the first place.

Here are the instructions in case you want to make one yourself!

If you don’t like red and grey, I have other winter themes colour scheme ideas here!

If you would like to download the pattern as a pdf, you can do so here: winter patchwork cushion pattern.

How to Make a Patchwork Cushion

You will need: 1 fq each of 5 different fabrics, either the downloaded pattern or newspaper/ greaseproof paper, pencil and ruler, pins, sewing machine or needle and thread, digital camera (optional).

Making the Pattern

You could download the pattern I used here. It will fit a cushion pad measuring 41 cm x 41 cm. The seam allowances are not included.

Or you could make your own. Here is how!

1. To make the pattern, firstly draw a sketch of how you want it to look.

2. Then measure the cushion pad and cut a square of greaseproof paper or newspaper the same size.

3. Depending on how particular you are, you could either just draw it onto the square or use maths to scale it up. My sketch was roughly a 6th of the size of the cushion pad, so I multiplied the dimensions of the sketch by 6.

4. Number the sections. This is very important! When you have numbered them, take a photo and also number the corresponding sections on your sketch.

Making the Cushion

1. Cut out the pieces for the front of the cushion. Add 1 cm all the way around each piece for the seam allowance.

2. Arrange the pieces and take a photo!

3. Begin to sew the pieces together. Start by joining the rows that have 2 pieces so that all your rows are complete. Remember that pieces cut on a diagonal will need to be joined at an angle! Trim the seams and press them flat.

4. Join the rows together, trimming and pressing seams open as you go.

Now the front section is completed!

5. Cut 2 pieces of fabric the same width as your now completed front piece and about 2/3 of the height.

6. Hem each piece along one of the wider edges.

7. It’s time to sew all the pieces together! Layer them up as follows:

Front piece right side up

Top back piece wrong side up (so right sides are together) with the top level with the top of the front piece.

Bottom back piece wrong side up with the bottom level with the bottom of the front piece.

Pin together and sew all the way round.

8. Trim seams and cut the points off the corners. Turn out and stuff a cushion pad inside.

Tips

Trim and press seams open as you go.

when joining pieces diagonally, place them right sides together at right angles to each other. The edges need to be together where the seam starts and finishes. If you line the pieces up at the corners they will look like this and you will be reaching for the unpicker just as I was! They need to look like this.

When joining the horizontal pieces, line up the diagonal joins first before pinning together. Remember to line them up where you will be sewing the seam!

Taking pictures with a digital camera will help you to remember which bits go where. You might think you will remember, perhaps you will, but I also thought this when I attempted to make a car seat cover, a project that went horribly wrong! You can read about that here!

If your cover turns out to be too large for the pad, just sew round the outside of it again slightly further in.

If the cover is too small, try the pad anyway. If it’s just a little bit too small it will just make the cushion look nice and plump. 🙂

The fabric I used came from Plush Addict. Here is a link for some cushion pad
and here is a link for pattern paper
(these are affiliate links).