eric: this video is brought to you by sailrite.visit sailrite.com for all your project supplies, tools and instructions. you can quickly andeasily make box cushions following this diy tutorial. there’s no faster way to makea cushion cover and still get gorgeous results. follow this seven step process and you toowill be making cushions in less than 60 minutes. brian: a couple things that make this cushioneasier: one, of course, there’s not as many panels to join so it does go a little faster.but more importantly, with a pattern like this, if your boxing didn’t line up, itwould look a little off and you could go either way- you could just have the boxing not lineup or you can spend a tremendous amount of time trying to match everything up. with thisparticular pattern and this design, it just
rolls right off the edge, the pattern carriesover; it does the same thing at the end. the only place your pattern doesn’t really matchis there at the corner. but that’s a lot better than having a complete mismatch allalong all the faces. eric: thanks brian! let’s get started showingyou in less than 20 minutes how to make this easy cushion from start to finish. we’llstart by cutting the foam to size. brian: what we’re going to do to start withis we need to start with our dimension of our finished cushion. now our finished cushionwe desire to be 40â½â€ long by 19â€. this is a square cushion so adding a â¼â€ to eachdimension really just means we’re going to add â½â€ to the length and â½â€ to thewidth.
eric: step 1: cut the foam to the desiredsize plus â¼â€ to all sides of the foam. brian: so my length is going to be 41â€.okay so there’s our 41â€. what i did here is i actually split our table in two. thismay not always be possible, but it’s easiest to get a good straight line if you can followthe edge of the table. the length of our foam is going to require me to support both sides.if you have it just hanging off, then your foam’s…you’re not going to get a straightcut. so i’ve got my cut line, as you can see right along the edge of the table, andso what i’m going to do is just take my knife and follow the line. eric: to cut the foam, we’re using an electrickitchen knife. be sure not to do this on a
table that you’re concerned about damaging.try to hold the knife as straight as possible so your cut is straight and true.brian: when you get to the very end, you probably will need to hold the foam. eric: making a lot of cushions? you may wantto consider purchasing the acu-cutter 350 from sailrite. it has a base that helps guidethe blade making it easier to keep your cuts straighter.the foam is cut to size. now it’s time to pattern the bottom plate. brian: what we’re going to do now is we’regoing to go ahead and trace this onto our underlining material. for this project we’reusing cushion underlining material. what this
is is it’s a breathable fabric and it hasa little bit of a grippy texture to it so that way it doesn’t slide as much on theapplication. eric: step 2: use foam and trace around iton the fabric. then draw a new line â¼â€ inside that first line. brian: okay we’re going to trace a lineon the outside. we want to make sure not to compress our foam as we go. eric: we’re using a high density foam thatis rated as firm from sailrite. this foam will last 10+ years, even if used often. andas you can see, it provides excellent support for the occupant and is very comfortable.
brian: now what we need to do is we need todraw a line â¼â€ in all the way around and that will be our actual cut line. eric: visit sailrite.com to see more choicesof high density foam in size, thickness, and firmness ratings. it’s now time to cut thecushion underlining material to size. brian: this cuts well with scissors, but ifyou have a rotary cutter and rotary cutting mat, i like to do it this way. you have good,crisp lines that way. we’re cutting along that inside line. so effectively, what we’redoing here, is we’re cutting this underlining material a â¼â€ smaller than our foam. which,if you remember, our foam is a â¼â€ larger than our desired cushion size. so effectively,this underlining is going to be the size of
our desired finished cushion. now the reasonthat i’m cutting in the manner i am is i’m cutting the fabric that’s outside of myruler is going to be the scrap material. basically this is my finish. i want to cut outside becauseif i mis-cut like that, it doesn’t really matter. alright, while i have this plate likethis, what i want to do is fold it in half each direction and just go ahead and makea pencil mark. what this is doing is this is marking the center of each panel, or eachside. we’ll explain that in a bit. eric: box cushions require an opening forthe foam to be inserted inside the cover. coming up next, we’ll install a zipper tothe bottom side of our plate. brian: okay we’re going to start by liningup our zipper. we’re going to cut it about
4â€-5†too long. eric: step 3: we’ll baste and sew a zipperto the bottom plate. brian: i’m going to go ahead and separatethe tape just slightly. now the key with a locking slider is it almost takes three hands.you have to be pulling on the zipper tab as you’re moving it forward. it’s even alittle harder when you’re trying to hold it where the camera can see it. eric: the seven steps to make this quick andeasy box cushion will be listed at the end of this video. brian: there we go. so we’ve got our zipperstarted. now we don’t want to zip it all
the way; we’re just going to go ahead andget it started. as you can see, the zipper is closed on both sides. we’re using â¼â€tape for this entire project. on the zipper it’s important because it ensures that you’rekeeping the basting tape completely away from the zipper teeth. when we’re using thisin other places, we’re using the â¼â€ tape because we’ll be using a 3/8†seam, andusing a â¼â€ tape for a 3/8†seam ensures that the tape will be inside of the cushion;not outside and exposed. eric: peel off the transfer paper and theglue will be revealed. brian: we’re going to baste this teeth down.you can see that i’m pulling the tape as i go because the basting tape does stick quitewell to this underlining material, and i’m
just peeling as i stick. what i’m goingto do is i’m going to start, oh, roughly 1â€-1 â½â€-2†away from the edge. youcan see that my zipper foot is lined up along the outside of the zipper teeth. now we’reon the backside, but if you just feel you can kind of see where they’re at. so we’llstart sewing. do a couple backstitches at the beginning. eric: for indoor cushions, we recommend usinga nylon thread. for outdoor, use a polyester. we’re using v-69. for lighter fabrics likethis, you can also use an upholstery thread. brian: when we get to the end, we lift andturn 90 degrees. now what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew across the teeth.we’re going to go ahead and go back and
forth once that way we’re putting threesets of stitches across. eric: notice when brian rotates the fabric,the needle is buried. brian: lift the foot, go ahead and pull thatmaterial through, drop our foot again, and sew towards the other end. i’m going tostop even with my other one there. once again, do a few backstitches. now what we’re goingto do is put our slider forward. eric: to push the slider back, brian useshis scissors. brian: okay, what we’ve done is we’vejust slid our slider onto the sewn tape. now we’re going to do a couple rows of stitchesacross. what that’ll do is that will contain our slider so it can’t come off the end.what we’re going to do is we’re going
to cut just a little bit. we want to makesure we’re not cutting our zipper teeth, but rather just cutting a little hole to getour scissors into. then just cut a slit. since we used the cushion underlining material,it doesn’t ravel on us. so we don’t have to worry about this edge. if you were usinga fabric that would unravel, then you would need to do a finished edge here. with thismaterial, just cut it; you’re good to go. eric: here comes the fun part. we will useour decorative fabric for the top plate. this plate will include our facing for the sidesof the cushion. brian: what we want to do is take our cushionand lay it out in the general area we’re going to go.
eric: step 4: trace around foam on wrong sideof fabric. then subtract â¼â€ from foam thickness and draw a second line out from that measurementon the top plate. let’s let brian explain it. brian: you want to make sure that the frontof your cushion is…make sure you’re following the pattern, if there is a squared off pattern,make sure you’re doing that. the other thing too is we’re going to have to extend thisout a bit because this is actually going to be our sides also. so just take your foam,go onto each side, and make sure you have plenty of extra material before you starttracing to ensure you can get enough out of the edge. then we’re going to go ahead andtrace our foam. okay, we’ve got our foam
traced; pull that off. okay, now what we needto do is measure the thickness of our foam. now we know we have 3†foam here, but it’salways good to double check and we can see that yes, it is 3â€. now what we’re goingto be doing is we’re going to add the same amount of fabric as our foam minus a â¼â€.so you’ve got 3†foam so we’re going to add 2 â¾â€ to each side. just trace eachline. this outside line will be our cut line. eric: step 5: extend lines at corners andcut out the plate at each square of fabric at the corners. then baste and sew at eachcorner. this forms the plate and facing edges. brian: now what i need to do is take my originallines, which is the outside edge of the foam, and i need to extend each of those lines allthe way to, or really just a little bit beyond,
my cut line. we’re going to go ahead anduse a cutting mat and rotary cutter for this. with this fabric you can use scissors, youcan use a hotknife; really any preferred technique. eric: to keep the edge of a synthetic fabricfrom unravelling, use a hotknife. we recommend the sailrite edge hotknife, if you preferthat rather than scissors or rotary cutter. brian: now what we’re going to do is wherewe extended these lines beyond, we’re going to go ahead and cut out each of those corners;just stop right at the corner. now that we’re on our face side, we’re going to add â¼â€basting tape to each corner. and the reason we tear this as opposed to cut it is it makesit easier to pull the paper off. eric: the seamstick is being added to theoutside surface of the fabric.
brian: now for each corner, just go aheadand separate our tape, and then you want to use it to baste the corner together. the keyis you want these edges to match up. so we’ll do that for each one. okay we’re going totake this to the sewing machine now. what we’re going to do is we’re going to setup for a 3/8†seam. so we’ll measure and we’ll set our guide. there we go. eric: this straight stitch is approximately3/8†away from the edge of the fabric. he does some reversing at the beginning and theend of his stitch to lock the stitch in place. he’ll do this for each of the four corners.you’ll notice that he’s not cutting the trailing threads. he’s simply moving toeach of the four corners and sewing them.
then when he’s done, he’ll go back tothose trailing threads and cut them close to the fabric. let’s move on.brian: what we want to do is just fold each side in half and just give ourselves a littlemark there for the center. eric: earlier we placed marks on the bottomplate. these marks will be used to match up the two assemblies when it comes time to basteand sew. you’re almost done. it’s now time to sew our assembly together to makethe cushion cover. brian: now remember this is the face, or thebottom, of our zipper. this is the inside. so we want to go outside. we’re going toput a row of basting tape all around the edge. eric: step 6: we’ll baste the top plate’sincorporated facing to the bottom plate and
then sew it up. brian: we didn’t cut our zipper off earlierso we’ll do that now. just pull that back and just cut right through it there. justmake sure your other end is away from your seam. we’re going to go ahead and cut alittle bit of that off too so it doesn’t get in our way. you can do this with pins.some people also choose to line it up and do it as they sew. i like to do the bastingtape, and basting tape sticks pretty well to these fabrics. it just enables you to getit all put together and just makes the sewing process go a little faster. now we’re goingto get our actual cushion material. we’re going to get it face down, expose our bastingtape. what we want to do is the marks that
we made, we’re going to go ahead and linethose marks up. what we’re doing is we’re getting the center of each one set and thenwe’ll get the corners set and everything else we’ll kind of guide to make sure itshould all be the same. but it just helps to make sure we have a nice good, square cushion. eric: one of the main advantages to usingbasting tape to baste this assembly to the bottom plate is that if you get somethingthat doesn’t line up perfectly, you can un-baste it and re-baste it until you’rehappy with the results. then you can take it to the sewing machine and sew it. becausewe are using a â¼â€ wide seamstick for canvas from sailrite, we know that when we take thisassembly to the sewing machine and sew a 3/8â€
seam, we will not sew through the bastingtape ensuring that when the cover is turned right side out, the tape will not be visible. brian: what we’re going to do is we stillhave our guide set up for a 3/8†seam so we want to start just inside of that seamand make sure we’re not catching our material on the backside, which we’re not. eric: we’re using the world famous sailriteultrafeed ls-1 sewing machine. this is a straight stitch walking foot sewing machine. also availableis the sailrite ultrafeed lsz a straight/zigzag sewing machine. brian: and bring yourself to just short ofthe edge a little bit right there, lift your
foot, turn, and just work your material underlike so, drop your foot, and sew. eric: we’ve chosen to use geobella fabric,which is 100% olefin yarns. geobella is a superior quality design fabric great for indoorand outdoor applications. geobella is virtually indestructible and wears like iron makingthis a life proof fabric for any home. order your favorite pattern and color at sailritetoday. last step, insert the foam. brian: what we do is in front of our zipperhere we just go ahead and separate the zipper and pull it right side out. eric: step 7: turn cover right side out, insertfoam and push into corners and edges. brian: as you do, you’re going to want togo ahead and take your hand and get your corners
worked square. at the end of the day there’snot really a right way or wrong way or easy way to get the foam in. it just depends onhow you prefer to wrestle your alligators! now that we are inside, now what we need todo is basically go around the whole cushion and just get things worked into the properplace. things really do look good when it’s all squared up. eric: don’t go away. the materials and toolslist is coming up, and the seven step process guide that should help you navigate your nextcushion project. brian: you kind of get to a point where youjust don’t think you can do a whole lot more. then go ahead and zip it up, and thenyou can still take and kind of work things
around from there. our desired size was 19â€x 40 â½â€. so if i line up my ruler you can see edge to edge about 19â€, and if you linethis up we’re pretty much right at our 40 â½â€ mark. i’m brian with sailrite. thankyou for watching. eric: we made two cushions for our seatingarea and a few throw pillows with coordinating fabrics from sailrite. as you can see, theylook awesome and are very comfortable. here’s the materials list and tools we used to makethese cushions. you will find hundreds of great dã©cor and upholstery fabrics from sailrite.pick yours today. sailrite recommends using a high density foam for cushions that willsee daily use. coming up next is the seven step guide. after watching this video andpurchasing your supplies and tools from sailrite,
you should be ready to make this quick andeasy diy cushion project. feel free to pause and study this list as you make your own.it’s your loyal patronage to sailrite that makes these videos possible. i’m eric grant,and from all of us here at sailrite, thanks for watching.