I always have an eye out for furniture being thrown away. We furnished our first apartment with free stuff on the side of the road or stuff we built. Recently I found this really cool bench that would work in the breezeway of our house.
Excuse the mess around the bench, we are working on building a chicken coop… The bench obviously needs a facelift. The cushions are gross and it’s pretty dirty. It’s also missing a leg in the back… I know how to pick ’em!
Let’s get these cushions re-covered! First things first, that old fabric has to go! I don’t know how they got the foam block inside this fabric because the zipper doesn’t unzip enough to get it out… so I have to cut it out!
Once I got rid of that awful fabric, I could lay out and measure the new fabric.
I’m using a super easy envelope pattern which isn’t necessarily designed for cushions with sides like this. So I have to account of the extra surface to cover on each side. I made sure the fabric went around the front and back edges about 2 inches which is about half way up cushion. I measured out 2 inches out from the cushion in the back, marked it with a chalk marker then cut the fabric to size.
Next I folded over one end on the short side of the fabric so I could stitch a simple hem. Ironing the hem down helps keep the fold even.
To create the “envelope” I fold each short side of the fabric towards the middle, wrong side showing and the un-hemmed side overhanging the hemmed side a few inches.
To make sure I didn’t fold the short sides over too much or not enough, I made sure there were 2inches extra on either side, like I did when I cut the fabric earlier. Time to pin and stitch!
This is where it gets fun; seeing my final product coming together! Once I stitched along each side (I didn’t sew the section of overhanging un-hemmed fabric, so it creates a kind of flap… I really have no idea how to explain, so I hope that makes sense! ha!) I turn the fabric right side out.
Time to cover the cushion!
Once the whole pillow was in the case I just had to tuck in the un-hemmed flap under the hemmed side.
DONE!
When we picked up the bench from in front of someones house, the man giving it away came out and said that he had it’s twin and if we wanted it just let him know. We went back a few days later to get it! It’s in slightly better condition… well, it’s not missing a leg… We’ve decided to take off all the legs of the first one that’s already missing one and turning it into a swing. The second one that has all it’s legs we will keep as a bench.
