New Couch Cushions

The last time my mom was in town to visit, we decided that the apartment could use a little more color. I have been going with a color scheme of sage green and chocolate brown, so I thought it would be nice to throw in some yellow and a coral pink. If you've ever been in my parents house, that color scheme might sound incredibly familiar. But what can I say? My mom has great taste.

Since Josh and I have been married, we've been trying to slowly collect more and more stuff to make our little apartment more home-y, and have come along way from when we first got married. Now that we have more colors, I'm trying to get things that will help tie in those colors. I thought more couch cushions to go with the chocolate brown ones that I already have would be a great way to do that. The problem was, I have been looking for new couch cushions for months and haven't been able to find any that I like. So finally I decided that I could just make them, and then they would be exactly what I wanted.

This brought in a new set of problems. The first was that I had a really hard time finding fabric that had my colors and had a pattern that I liked. After some searching, I decided to just get different fabrics in my different colors and put them together. Eventually, I was able to get what I needed from a combination of Wal-Mart, Hancock Fabrics, and JoAnn's.

The next problem: I don't have a sewing maching. And I couldn't borrow Lindsey's because they were moving. I thought of maybe using the fabric adhesives that you can buy, but I wasn't sure if that would be strong enough to hold a couch cushion together for a long period of time. So my only option was to hand-sew them.

The problem with that? Despite the fact that I have a mom who designed, sewed, and sold children's clothing, I don't exactly have a lot of experiece with the craft.

I ended up accidentally sewing the pillow to my pants who knows how many times. I'm sure Josh was getting pretty worried about how they were going to turn out.

I was making 3 pillows total: 2 identical 12x12 pillows, and one smaller 12x16. I started with the 12x12s because I thought they would be easier to begin with. And the first one turned out surprisingly well; it at least gave me enough confidence to keep forging ahead.

The middle cushion was going to be trickier, because it had a lot more details. I had to make little fabric flowers to go on it, and sew lace to the fabric before I could sew all of the fabric to the edging.

I think the flowers are my favorite part.

You can tell that they are handmade and not the best craftmanship, but it was fun to do, and we like how they turned out. They really brighten up the apartment.