I've become a little bit obsessed with adorning my house with cushions and in doing so have reignited my love affair for sewing. I bought my mini john lewis sewing machine about 4 years ago and for just £50 is one of my best buys ever. At the time the lady in the haberdashery said I should get the £99 version as this one was designed for really light sewing and not cushions/ bag making. However it's never given me and problems and is the perfect first sewing machine - I highly recommend it!
I made these cushions from a selection of swatches ordered from the John Lewis website. You can order 6 to any address within a period of time for free. They post them to your house completely free of charge and they have some of the most amazing fabric's on offer. I know it's a little unorthodox to order swatches to make free cushions but I do end up spending a lot of money in the haberdashery section of John Lewis so I think it's fine. You can order your swatches here. You can only order 6 at a time and you do need 7 to make each of these cushions that are about 40 x 40 cm. But you can of course order swatches to different addresses, maybe work, home, parents house, boyfriends house ... you get the idea.
- You need to sew four swatches vertically together and three swatches horizontally together.
- Then sew them altogether to make a massive piece of patchwork swatch.
- You then just need to sew the edges on two more sides.
- Sew the edge about a centimeter on the remaining open side to neaten it up.
- Put your cushion inside then work out where you need your buttons.
- Sew the buttons on then make holes for the buttons on the other side.
- You can then sew round the button holes to stop them fraying and to keep it all neat.
It's so easy to do - I bought some buttons from John Lewis that were about 20p each and used the inner cushion pads from some old cushions I had lying around. Altogether these cost less than £1 each and I love them. They really set off some plainer cushions I have and look so cute on my sofa's!