Recently I made a wooden swinging seat and have spent the last couple of weekends making some box cushions for it. As usual, I like to make things difficult for myself by wanting to add piping and a zipper to make the cover removable. I have made cushions like this before but it has been a while so this was a fun project to get stuck into. This post will cover how I made the cushions as well as how I made the covers. For a tutorial on making your own piping, see this post.
THE PLAN
I decided to make one cushion for the seat and one for the back. For the armrests, I’m going to grab some scatter cushions from my local junk store when I get a chance. Overall, these cushions are quite simple because they are just rectangular – there aren’t any weirdly shaped curves. This meant I just needed to get my hands on some rectangular pieces of foam. The foam I used is from a really cheap 6 inch memory foam mattress. I had some leftovers from a previous project so just cut this down to fit. I find that getting ready cut memory foam squares is more expensive than doing this, which is why I didn’t bother. I think it’s because this cheap mattress only had about 2 inches of memory foam on the top and the rest was normal foam. While that’s rubbish for a mattress, it’s perfect for a sofa or a chair.
I also didn’t have a big budget for these cushions so I decided to skip the wadding. Wadding is that thin but foamy/ fluffy material that you would use inside quilted blankets. Traditionally, you would wrap your memory foam cushion in wadding. Then you would stitch a basic cotton cover that is not removable to get your base cushion. Then you would make the outer removable cover. I didn’t bother with the wadding or the cotton inner cover because of the budget. If you have a bigger budget, I would recommend doing that as it gives a better finish to the cushion overall.
For the actual cover design, I did want a zip. This is because these cushions are being used outside so it’s unrealistic to think that they won’t get dirty enough to need washing. I also wanted some piping around the edges because I think this really gives a cushion that professional feel. Making and sewing in piping did make this project longer and trickier but I think the final result is worth it.
MATERIALS & TOOLS REQUIRED
Note that some links below may be affiliated links. See our affiliate policy for more info.
Materials
Quantity and sizes of everything will depend on how big your cushions are and how many you are making.
Tools
- Fabric scissors
- Measuring tape
- Sewing pins
- Something to mark the fabric with
- Electric carving knife (if you’re cutting your own foam down. A long sharp kitchen knife would be my second choice if you don’t have an electric one)
- Sewing machine (optional but makes life much easier. If you don’t have one, you will need a hand sewing needle)
STEP 1: MAKING THE FOAM CUSHION INSERT
As I said above, I made my cushion insert out of a cheap memory foam mattress. I brought the mattress about a year ago for another project and had leftover foam blocks so all I had to do was cut those down to size.
The easiest way by a mile to cut thick foam is by using an electric carving knife and I do have one of those. I measured out the piece sizes I needed and used the knife to cut them down. The back cushion ended up being made up of 5 separate foam blocks like a jigsaw.
To fit this swinging chair, I cut my cushions to be:
- Seat width: 100.4cm; seat depth: 78cm
- Back width: 100.4cm; back height: 59cm
Once all the pieces were cut, I used flooring spray glue to glue them together. There isn’t a specific reason for using flooring spray glue – as long as it’s a good quality one that will hold up, you can use it. I think buying a mattress to just make these cushions would leave too much foam unused so if you haven’t got another project to use the rest of it on, it’s probably more cost effective to just buy foam blocks.
STEP 2: CUTTING OUT THE FABRIC
Because the cushions are just rectangular, cutting out the fabric was fairly easy. I added 2cm to each cushion dimension to get the seam allowance of 1cm. This meant that for the top and bottom of the cushions I needed to cut:
- Seat width: 102.4cm; seat depth: 80cm – x2
- Back width: 102.4cm; back height: 61cm – x2
The sides are a little trickier. I was attaching a 100cm long zipper to each cushion so I decided to cut one continuous piece of fabric for x3 sides and a separate 100cm piece to fit the zipper. The continuous fabric for my seat cushion was around 280cm long and for the back cushion, it was around 240cm. I basically made sure it reached 3/4th way around the cushion and added an extra 20cm on top of that. All side pieces were around 18cm wide which gave me just over 1cm seam allowance on each side.
STEP 3: ATTACHING THE PIPING BIAS
After all the fabric has been cut out, the piping bias needs to be attached to the top and bottom of the cover. To attach the bias, I laid the fabric piece the right way up. Then I pinned the bias around the edge with the actual piping bit facing towards the fabric centre. Around the corners of the cushion cover, the bias seam allowance needed to be snipped in several places to help it curve. Once it’s pinned all the way around, back at the starting place, don’t cut off the rest of the bias just yet.
When sewing the bias to the cushion I started and ended my sewing around 3 inches away from the ends of the bias – you want to leave a good length unattached at each end. When I reached the end, I snipped the excess bias but I made sure that I cut it a couple of inches too long. I also made sure to sew close to the actual piping thread to make sure it would be neat and not too sticky-outy when finished.
A note on stitching around the corners. That can be quite tricky because of how thick the piping thread is inside the bias. You don’t have to fight with it though, if you leave your sewing machine needle in the fabric, you can lift the foot and pivot the fabric without losing your spot.
When back at the starting point, around 3 inches away from the end, here is how to attach the bias ends together to leave a neat finish:
- Unpick the fabric from both ends of the bias to expose the actual threads
- Line up the threads with each other and cut both at the same time. This will make them the perfect length to meet
- Take the end away from you, fold the fabric edge inwards to hide the raw edge
- Take the end closest to you and lay this inside the fabric from the other end so that the two threads are meeting each other
- Stitch across finishing the bias
This then needs to be repeated on all cut faces. For me, this was 3 more times as I was making 2 cushions in total.
STEP 4: SEWING THE ZIPPER INTO ONE SIDE
Sewing the zipper in is very easy. I took the 100cm piece I cut earlier and cut it in half length-wise. I then attached the zipper in between the pieces. When it was sewn on, I stitched along both sides of the zipper to make the fabric lay flat. It did make it look much neater. I did this for both of my 100cm cut pieces, one for each cushion.
STEP 5: ATTACHING THE SIDES
To attach the sides, I followed this YouTube video. It’s very easy to follow what she is doing to get the sides to fit perfectly. I will also explain it below.
I laid my piece of fabric with the bias face up. I then laid the long piece of side material face down on top, making sure that the side piece ended at roughly the same place on each end of the cushion so that the zipper piece would look centred. I didn’t bother pinning the whole piece, I just put a pin in one end so I knew where to start stitching. Make sure that you leave a few inches at the start and end unattached.
Now is the tricky part and where the YouTube video will help you massively. Here is how I attached the zipper side:
- Fold back one of the side edges that are hanging loose
- Lay the zipper side in place face down either level with this folded back edge or short of it but still past the fold
- Fold over the loose piece of the sides so that it covers the edge of the zipper piece (fold it twice if you left it long enough)
- Pin this fold and pop a stitch in across it close to the edge
- Repeat this on the other side
- Lay the whole cover side perfectly flat and lay the zipper side so that it is the perfect length. This means that those loose edge pieces that are attached to the zipper side but not the cushion top are folded under the zipper side
- Stitch the zipper side down, including the folds underneath it
Following the above steps will create a sort of pocket into which the zipper piece runs when the cushion is turned the right way out. I did this on the other cushion too.
STEP 6: ATTACHING THE TOP
To attach the top, the most important bit is to line up the corners. To do this, I went ahead and made a little snip on the sides of the cushion in each corner.
I didn’t bother pinning the top, I just started at one corner and sewn all the way around making sure my corners lined up.
Don’t forget to pop your zip open a bit before stitching the top on so that you can turn the cushion the right way!
THE RESULT
I love the way these turned out. I made a couple of different types of box cushions before and these are definitely my favourite. They’re the perfect firmness/ softness and the fabric is thick like upholstery fabric but it’s not so thick that it was difficult to work with. Overall, this was a really fun project – it’s nice to do something different sometimes!
