Mark's DYI (Drive Yourself Insane) Project - continued

Aloha - I'm back from market, with several months' worth of responsibilities met, still plagued with the irregular sleeping pattern of waning jet lag, feeling renewed, refreshed and psyched to revisit several projects that were put on hiatus for my professional responsibilities.

In a previous post I got you involved in a very intensive project I had undertaken -- the reupholstering of cushions for my over-sized elephant bamboo arm chair. We left off with all of the 300+ triangles paired up and sewn together into strips, and the strips sewn together into pieces of fabric to be cut into the shapes for the cushion covers.

First I needed to deconstruct the original cushion cover to create patterns, learn the techniques used in construction, and save the zipper to repurpose in the new cover. Luckily both the top and bottom of the cover pieces were the exact same size and shape, so I needed only one template as a pattern.

After the template was ironed flat, I folded it in half and creased it, using the fold line to find the center of my pieced fabric. Trepidation came over me as I prepared to cut the pieced fabric, as weeks of cutting and sewing were at stake here, and one miscalculation would mean irritating reworking of the patchwork. Luckily I work slowly and methodically, and I tend to reason things out, so I managed to come out of this unscathed.

The corner notches were sewn first on the bottom section, and the zipper attached. The piping, which had been made along with the pieced fabric, was sewn to the top of the cover after the notches were sewn.

Next, the two halves were sewn together like a clamshell set upon itself curve against curve (right sides together) and then sewn all around. What a thrill it was to stuff the foam insert into the new cushion cover (while holding my breath and praying the seams wouldn't burst!) With great anticipation I needed to see what the top cushion looked like on the chair. Over the next few days (gotta get some work in there too) I'll construct the bottom cushion in a similar fashion, sans piping, and I'll post a picture of the chair when it is fully redecorated. I can already tell just from completing the top cushion that it is going to look better than I had expected!