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Xmas Present 1 - Star Trek cushions


So, one of my friends is a giant Trek geek (this is not saying I'm not, but she's even more of a fan than I am). And she moved house fairly recently, so, when I saw this fabric over at Plush Addict, I thought "yes! cushions!" and then procrastinated for about a month over whether she'd actually like them.
(spoilers: she did)
Anyway, these are really basic envelope cushions with piping round the edges to make them look a bit more fancy. I'll admit I'd never done piping on anything before, but once I found the zipper foot for my sewing machine, it made everything much easier.

The piping was handmade using cord and bias tape.


The cushions are made from a fat quarter of the Trek fabric, and a fat quarter of Kona black quilting cotton. In hindsight I should have had slightly more fabric to do the envelope backs, as they do gape a little, but not so massively that it's a problem.

I made these both in a day when I was off sick with what we're loosely calling flu, but was mostly me being slightly snotty and a lot fed up with one of my co-workers who DID have flu being in the office.
My paste table is my usual cutting and pinning surface, as it's the largest flat surface that isn't the floor. It's not ideal, but this isn't a big house and the spare room is still a dumping ground.
I'm assuming this photo is after I'd sewn the piping to the front and while I was pinning the backs to it all.


This is the first one completed. I apparently didn't take any in progress shots of this one. The cushion pads are from Dunelm.
All I did to make these was measure the cushions, add, I think, an inch (1/2 an inch each way) so that they wouldn't be too fat, and cut the fronts. The backs were cut to the right width and then the fabric was cut in half so that there would be an overlap, then I hemmed the edges. On the second one this went a bit wrong thanks to my sewing machine having a massive sulk over something, so it looks a bit crooked.
The piping was applied to the front piece and sewn together, then the back pieces were pinned in place (kind of fiddly) and sewn together. And voila.
 Here you can see the second one with the piping pinned in place, and the back pieces completed.

And this is after the piping has been sewn on and I'm pinning the back on, trying to keep it level.

All in all these were pretty simple makes. The piping was the fiddliest thing to do I think. I learnt a couple of things about hemming (IRON EVERYTHING) and about my machine (it HATES sewing too close to the edge)

And they went down pretty well, which I'm pretty pleased with :)



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