Envelope Cushion With Piping Tutorial

Better late than never for this weeks tutorial from me

I recently wrote about my dramas after messing up some measurements when I was ordering some fabric to make up cushions for our playroom, I thought I might share the cushions as a tutorial!

Envelope openings are (IMO) the easiest option for cushions, no zips or buttons to mess about with and the finished result is neat and professional. I also love the look of piping around a cushion, I feel it really “finishes” them nicely, although because of my lack of a piping foot, my piping is part flange, it still looks superb.

It’s line-ball as to whether this is an easy or medium project, I rated it easy, my husband rated it medium. I feel that it’s simple once you’ve cut out your fabric and can visualise it, but the written instructions are somewhat difficult to understand - I need to start doing video tutorials so I can have some better visuals!

You Will Need

• Fabric! The amount depends on the size of cushion you’re covering - see below for how much I used for my 50cm (19.5inches) cushion. You’ll also need some long strips for the piping. I’m using the Eric Carle’s Hungry Caterpillar fabric that I bought from Fabric.com.
• Piping cord (I cheated and used bulky weight yarn as I didn’t have any cord to hand!)
• A piping foot will make this easier and neater, but isn’t essential - I didn’t use one.
• A cushion form and your usual sewing supplies.

Tutorial behind the jump, just click to increase the picture size.

First off you need to cut your fabric, these are my measurements for my cushion form (50cm/19.5inches) all measurements are in inches.

• For the front - one 20×20 piece
• For the back - two 20×14 pieces
• For the piping - two strips of 44×1.5

Of course, the sizing will change based on the size of your form, one thing with cushions is that it’s almost impossible to measure them wrong, if your cover is a little tight, just tell everyone you were going for the “overstuffed” look, if it’s too large just buy a cushion form one size up and tell them the same thing You can see in this picture how I added the extra strip of fabric to the bottom of my front panel, I firmly believe that a big part of sewing is making mistakes and then working out how you can convince everyone that it was intentional!

Start on your piping. Sew the two strips together and press the seams flat to cut down on any bulk. Fold in half lining up the raw edges and press your fold along the length of the strip. Open up and place your cording (or yarn!) inside the strip, moving it right up into the fold. Then sew! You want to keep your stitches as close to the cord as possible - this is when the piping foot comes in handy, its smaller size allows you to get very close. Sew along the length of your strip.

Take your front fabric and pin your piping all around the outside on the right side of the fabric, raw edges together and the piping fold pointing towards the centre of the cushion. Work it carefully around the corners. Leave an excess of about two inches of piping where you start, continue all around your front panel until you come back to where you started. Trim the piping with an extra two inches spare, unpick the stitching that trapped the cord, open up the fabric and snip off two inches of the cord. This will give you an excess of fabric which you can then fold over the raw edge and line up with the start of your piping to give you a neat edge. Machine baste all around the outside.

Move onto your two back pieces, fold over the raw edge on one of the longer sides and top stitch a quarter inch from the fold just to create a neat edge, repeat for the second piece. Place your back pieces on top of your front piece with the right sides together and the raw edges aligned. You want the two separate back pieces overlapping each other in the middle of the cushion. Assistance from an over enthusiastic toddler is optional.

Pin and sew all four sides with a quarter inch seam, firmly trapping the piping in between the two layers. Again, this is a good moment to have a piping foot, the slimmer foot allows you to get right up next to the cording and makes the finish neater, I still feel that even without a thinner foot that the finished result is pretty good, like I said, it’s more piping meets flange Don’t forget to backstitch several times over the area that will be the opening to strengthen it.

Trim your corners and fold the right way out, give it a good iron and you’ll have a superb and totally unique handmade cushion cover! Take a moment to bow down to your own skillz and then go and curl up on the sofa with your new cushion and a hot chocolate… or do as I did and instantly start questioning why on earth I chose a primarily white fabric for a playroom cushion and screech as it starts getting covered in Nutella hand prints before even being in place a full hour.

Feedback is always welcome, and if you have made your own cushion, feel free to share it with us via the CraftBlog Flickr Pool!