A Zip-free Christmas Ribbon Cushion Tutorial

I love ribbons, for this I blame my mother and her putting my hair in plaits when I was a child.

This cushion is actually rather easy but looks very impressive
You will need for a 12" square cushion:

10 mtrs of  1" ribbons... if you change the width of your ribbon then the amount of ribbon you will need will vary
A separate 1.3m of 1" ribbon
1 piece of medium to heavy iron on interfacing 14" square
1/2 metre of fabric to complement your ribbon colours
A cork board which is bigger than 14"
Map pins or sewing pins with coloured tops
Cushion pad
Wait for it... iron and ironing board, with a pressing cloth
Box of matches
Chop stick
12 x 12" cushion pad - Merrick and Day are great suppliers



Place your interfacing onto the corkboard with the iron on side uppermost, secure each corner with a map pin.

Next cut your ribbons in to 13.5" lengths (this gives you a 5/8" seam allowance when you sew up your cushion) - use pinking shears to cut your ribbons, as ribbon when cut can rival Usain Bolt when he runs the 100m!



Now you have to decide how you will weave your cushion, for our first venture we will just use simple weaving.

Pin 14 strips of ribbon to the top of your interfacing, ensuring that each ribbon is side by side.  These vertical ribbon are your warp threads.  Now take your first ribbon to go across, pin it down on the left hand side and begin to weave it under then over each of the warp threads.  When you get to the right hand side, pin it down, you have now completed your weft row - there is a really easy rhyme to remember which direction weaves go in - weft goes right to left.

When you begin your next row, butt your ribbon right up against your first row and then  you do the opposite with your weaving, so when on the last row you went under, this time you go over and so on until you reach the end.  Pin it in.  Continue this until all of the 14 ribbons have been used up.


You will notice that despite being the world'sbest weaver some of your ribbons have shifted a little.  Work along all of the warp ribbons (the verticals) and secure them with the map pins, repeat this with your weft ribbons.

Turn on your iron to a cool setting but sufficiently hot to fuse the interfacing to the ribbon, take the cork board to your ironing board - pop your pressing cloth on top of the weaving (if you do not have one, use a clean cotton tea towel - now gently iron the square of weaving until the interweaving has fused to the ribbons.  Now remove one side of pins, press this down, and repeat for the other three sides.


Cut out a 14" square, pin and sew it to the reverse side of your weaving using a seam allowing of 5/8", this will give your cushion front more body. Trim the excess fabric away and you should have a square of 13.5".

Cut two pieces of fabric 13.5 x 10".  Turn over and 1/4 in seam.  Take one piece of fabric, and fold back 3 1/4", then with right sides facing pin it to your cushion front, now take your other front and pin it to the other half of your cushion, it will overlap the piece that you have just sewed but don't worry.  Now sew all around with a 5/8" seam allowance.

At each corner, snip off the dog ear triangles (so that there is no bulk when you turn it out), turn the cushion inside out and use the chop stick inserted into the corners to give you a nice crisp corner.

Taking your left over ribbon, cut it into four equal pieces, measure along your opening and divide it by 3, mark (as your cushion is 12" this should be 4") and place a pin at 4" and 8". Take you ribbon and fold it in half widthwise, cut it into a point (of less than an inch) and seal along the edge with a match to stop it fraying at the other end cut out a triangle and repeat your trick with a match or if your prefer not be arrested for arson use your pinking shears.  Fold the pointy end under and pin to the cushion as shown in the picture, and sew to the cushion, repeat on the other side of the opening.

Now you have not only a ribbon woven cushion but an original and easily closer too!

This cushion is great on beds... but history tells me they are useless in cat households...

Yes, I know the window box has died - please send flowers :)

And now pop over to see what everyone else has been up to on Handmade Monday - it has to be one of the best craft linky parties around!

Summer Beach Hut for Sally - Cushion Tutorial

As you may realise I live by the seaside and like to take inspiration from what is going on around me for my applique cushions, so I did not even have to walk to the beach but found inspiration while drinking coffee from one of my lovely bone china mugs which are based on local views created by Howard Robinson, a renowned local artist.

Tutorial for the cushion

Materials

Cushion pad - Merrick and Day are great stockists
Main fabric - linen, cotton, ticking, calico
Applique fabric - scraps from previous projects, I find cottons work best
Sewing Cottons
Sewing Machine
Scissors and/or rotary cutter and mat
Iron on fusible bonding
Grease proof paper
Iron and ironing board
A saucer
Air erasable marker pen

In the famous words of Mrs Beeton, first choose your cushion, whether it be square or oblong, the choice is entirely yours... I am working with an oblong cushion pad which is 23" x 15".

Firstly, iron your main fabric, remember your iron is your very best friend when you are sewing.  Normal seam allowances are 5/8" but I am going to be really generous and give myself an inch, so I will need to cut out a piece of fabric which is 25"x17" and set it aside.  If you are using cotton ticking, it loves nothing better than to unravel, so cut it out with pinking shears or a pinking blade.

Now is your chance to literally go back to the drawing board, I am the least artistic person you will meet so a beach hut design is ideal as it is made up of squares, triangles and rectangles/oblongs.  You are now going to map these out on your greaseproof paper!  I used my cutting mat and ruler to draw out my pattern - this pic is drawn out on normal paper so you can read the dimensions.
Hut = Square 3 1/4" x 3 1/4" with a triangle rising 1 3/8" at the apex drawn on top
Door = Oblong 2.5" x 1.5" with a triangle rising to 3/4" at the apex drawn on top
Eaves = Oblong 3" x 3/4"

Cut out your design, pin it on your fabric scraps and cut it out carefully... all of the designs that we have chosen are symetrical so we do not have to worry about cutting out an item back to front. Trace around you pattern piece on the paper side of your iron-on fusible webbing.

Now place out your applique pieces on you fabric to see what works best for you, I have found that odd numbers of items work best, a bit like when you are gardening!

When you are happy that everything is in its place, peel off the paper from the fusible bonding, place it on the back of the fabric and then put it onto your cushion front and iron firmly into place, the bonding will give weight and strength to your fabric pieces. Do all the huts first and then the doors.

Your next step is to decide which stitch you will use to hold you pieces to the cushion front, you can use running stitch, satin stitch, blanket stitch, in fact let your imagination run riot and use any of the embroidery stitches your machine has - if this is the first time you have done this, have a little practice on some spare fabric, far better to make your mistakes where you will not see them!  I have used satin stitch for the beach hut with two complementary cottons and a running stitch for the bunting flags.

You only need to sew up the walls and base of the beach hut and all around the door.  Leave the roof unsewn as you will cover that with the eaves.

Next we will attach the eaves, overlay the oblongs to make a right angle which you overlay on the roof, start on the inside left hand side and work around the L hand side and then down the R hand side so that you will be able to complete it in one continuous piece of sewing.

Frankly, five beach huts look a little bit boring, so I thought that bunting would lift the cushion a little more.  Grab your saucer and place the edge under the edges of your eaves and draw from one to the other using the edge of the saucer as your guide.  This will be the "string" for your bunting, sew along your guideline with  a suitable stitch, I used satin stitch in lilac as I wanted to use a purple polka dot cotton for my bunting.

Cut out an oblong of 6" x 3/4", now fold the left hand corner over to the right side and cut out across the oblong, you have a square, fold this in half and you have a triangle, which becomes your bunting flag.  Repeat this until you have enough pennants to hang between your huts.  Now repeat this with your fusible bonding and iron the bonding and triangles in place.  I used a running stitch to hold the flags in place as I felt that the satin stitch looked too heavy.

Now we are going to make the back of our cushion, you need to decide how you want to close your cushion,  you could use, a simple envelope close, zip, tapes or buttons and whether you want it to close centrally or off-centre.  As this is quite a substantially sized cushion, I am going to use some large wooden buttons to ensure it closes firmly and to make it a little more interesting, it is going to close off-centre.

For my cushion, I will need to cut piece of fabric 31" x 17", this is 6" wider than the cushion front, as we will need to fold fabric over to take the buttonhole and to sew on the button, so cut the fabric so one piece is 11" wide and the other is 20" wide... don't forget to use your pinking shears to prevent fraying. Turn over a 1/4" seam down the 17" length of one side of each piece of fabric.

Now, you need to take the wider piece of fabric, fold over each seamed piece so that 2 3/4" is underneath and iron it into place.   Next, decide how many buttons and where you will place them, I am using two, so I place mine a third of the way down from the top and a third of the way from the bottom.

As you can see these buttons are large and my automatic buttonholer would not take them, so I need to mark the length of the buttonhole, you can use chalk, your pen or pins to do this.  

Change your machine foot to the buttonhole foot and if this is the first time you are doing a buttonhole take the time to do a little practice on a spare piece of fabric.  It will create the lower bar first, then run up the left hand side of the buttonhole, then the bar across the top and then back down the right hand side. Then using a sharp pair of scissors cut between the two sides of the buttonhole.

With the right sides of your fabric together, place the wider piece down first, as you will need the buttonholes to lie on top when you turn the cushion out.  As we have used a striped fabric, match the stripes together, we have a generous amount of fabric to ensure that this happens and that you get a really professional result when you finish.  Pin the fabric together and do the same with shorter width, matching the stripes again and laying it over the fabric which contains the buttonholes (four layers of fabric).

Sew around the cushion cover.  Before you turn the cushion cover out, go to each corner and cut off the corners above your seam, so that you will not have a bulk of fabric lying there and then you will get a lovely sharp corner. Turn the cushion out, sew your button in place and then insert your cushion pad.

You have now finished your cushion, ready for that Summer seaside look.

This cushion now lives with my friend Sally to remind her of her week spent on hols down in Cornwall.

And here are a selection of other Summer and seaside ideas, each of them are based on simple shapes of squares, triangles and oblongs/rectangles which are available in my Etsy Shop.

Please don't forget that it is also Handmade Monday, so go and take a look at what everyone has been up to over the past week... I see that Wendy, who hosts this is so darned organised that she is already making Christmas items!  Trust me to be behind...