Article provided by The Foam Factory
Have you recently bought wooden or wicker furniture without any cushions or padding? These furniture pieces may look rustic and comfortable now, but their hard exteriors will become less and less comfortable as you keep sitting in them. The quick and easy solution to this is getting a custom cushion or two that looks and feels great.
To make your own custom cushion, the first thing you need to do is to take your furniture’s measurements to make sure the cushion fits the seat. You can do this with a tape measure and possibly some tracing material such as paper or cardboard. Once you’ve recorded the shape and measurements of the cushion’s surface, it’s also important to know the desired height or thickness for your cushion, as this will determine how comfortable you will be when you’re sitting on it.
After this, you will need to get some foam and cut it to your specifications. You can find foam suitable for custom cushions from companies such as The Foam Factory. You can use rulers or a tracing of your furniture’s measurements to mark your foam with the shape you’ll be cutting out of it. If you like working with your hands, you can cut the foam with a serrated knife or an electric foam cutter. If you’d rather not do this part yourself, you can give your measurements to the experts at The Foam Factory, and they’ll cut the exact shape you specify.
Once you’ve made the right foam shape, it’s time to create a cover for your cushion. First, find a fabric pattern that is unique, expressive, and looks great next to the rest of your furniture. Then, you must make sure the fabric fits your cushion perfectly. Fabric designer Rachel Rossi’s blog has a good formula for calculating how much fabric your cushion needs. After you have your measurements, you can opt to sew the fabric into a complete cushion cover, but it does take some sewing skill. You need to know how to use sewing pins correctly and how to sew boxed corners. If you need some extra guidance, the blogs In My Own Style and A Beautiful Mess have detailed tutorials on how to sew custom cushion covers.
Insert your foam cushion into its cover and make sure it fits correctly. Once it is inside, you can close up your fabric cover by sewing it shut or by adding a zipper if you can.
