Pinwheel Cushion Cover

So in a break from dressmaking, I decided to upgrade a tired old cushion to make something a little nicer and not a drain on the eyes!

Ripped Cover as a result of a former career in student halls....

So this was originally a cheap cushion bought to cheer up my student flat many moons ago - the place was a dive and required some home comforts! The original fabric frayed really easily and in the process of unpicking probably reduced in size by at least a cm!

Having never bothered to fix the original tear this has gotten worse over the years :-(

The one good thing about the existing cover though was the presence of a good quality invisible zip!

The zip was still good!

This got saved so i could use it for the replacement cover. Also before i removed the cover and unpicked the seams i measured the seam allowance so when I made up the new one based upon the old measurements i didn't make it too small...

Checking the seam allowance so the final cover would fit.

I decided to keep to the original finishing technique so for the final make up i serged the edges, inserted the zip then sewed just inside the finished edges so nothreads would pull from the serged seam.


 So the final design was made up of materials from my stash - the purple is from my New Look 6144 dress and the white is from a bunch of fat quarters which im not sure they ever had a definate purpose.
the pattern isn't exactly how i envisioned it i didnt have enough of either colour to make one the entire background on both sides so I improvised a bit and dont think it turned out too badly.

Each of the pinwheels is made from a 6.5" square and each of the squares is then rotated one quarer wrt the previous one so it would give the efect of a rotating wheel. The inside of the cover is simply a piece of sheeting to line it and cover the raw edges - I was going to quilt the cover but the cushion was still quite good. On retrospect i should have quilted it. I may still do that at a future date....

I am pretty happy with the way the zip went in. It wasn't one of the rubbishy nylon ones which ever go in well - rather it was like a cotton tape so there wasnt much movement when it went in.

So I hope you like my little stop gap project - it was really quick to sew up and looks a million times better than its predecesor!

JCS