Katie's Window Seat

Please excuse the poor lighting and the messy room, but here is a picture of the window seat cushion I made for Katie's room. When we moved in there was just no cushion at all, so I started from scratch. I bought two 72in rolls of 2in foam that was 24in. wide. Since the window seat is 31 in. x 110 in. I ended up cutting the foam in five 24 in strips and glueing them together with tacky glue. I could have done it length wise, but I felt the longer seam would not have held together as well and might have been more noticeable. Sorry, I should have taken a picture once I had the pieces glued together to illustrate what I'm talking about, but I didn't think of it at the time.

Once I had the pieces of foam glued together, they seemed pretty secure, but because the cushion was so big, I felt I really should find a way to more securely keep all the pieces together. I had this muslin-like fabric left over from a clearance purchase of fabric years ago and it was exactly the right size to be able to enclose the whole cushion in one piece of fabric. The width of the fabric just made it around the cushion, so I had to whipstitch it on. I wanted a really tight fit anyway, and with a piece this big I just couldn't imagine fighting with sewing it inside out and then trying to wrangle it onto the foam without the pieces coming apart.
It took about 5 hours or so to whipstitch around both angled sides and the shorter straight edge. (The longer straight edge is the fold of the fabric.)

Here is a close-up of the fabric I used for the cover. It is a chenille, and DH hated it, but Katie loves it - and it is her room. I like it too, because I guess I always wanted a girly room when I was a child and never really had the chance because I was raised by my dad who didn't get such things, and I also had to share a room with one of my sisters and she wasn't the girly type as a child (though come to think of it she is now).

Oh, funny aside about DH and fabric: We were in JoAnn's picking out this fabric and I suggested a fabric to Katie and DH said, "Jenn, look this one is all messed up on the edge - I don't think you want that one. Actually lots of them are like that - maybe we should go to a different store." It took me a minute to realize he was talking about the selvedge edge. I actually had to convince him that was supposed to be like that to prevent fraying - when I first explained it (trying not to laugh in his face!) he didn't believe me and acted like I didn't know what I was talking about and this was all just poor quality fabric, etc. etc. Yeah, cause I've been doing crafty stuff including minor sewing projects since I was 10 - but you who are in a fabric store for about the 2nd time in your entire life, know more than me....

Anyway, I had decided I wanted the cover for the cushion to be removeable. Katie is only 5 after all, and although we don't allow her to eat food in her room, she does have markers and crayons and paints that she uses in there, and who knows what mischief a 5 yr old can get into right?

The fabric for the cover did not come in as wide a bolt as the fabric I used to enclose the cushion. I orginally intended to do either a zipper or an envelope back for the cushion, but I ended up doing this on the fly. The diagonal seems are all machine sewn - since I was using the fabric from selvedge to selvedge edge I didn't need to put in a hem to prevent fraying on the part of the fabric that didn't get sewn together. I just used a million pins to pin it tightly and to keep the fabric from slipping around and losing the shape I wanted. The opening works out fine, because it is just large enough to slip the cushion out of if I need to, but it is completely invisible on the back while the cushion is in place.

Now for the pillows - probaby won't make them until this weekend. The pillows are also a chenille, but in a lighter pink shade with hearts for the raised design instead of circles (Katie picked out both fabrics). I was thinking of using the small bit of fabric I have left from the seat cover to make piping on the lighter colored pillows to tie them together a bit. I've never done piping before though, so we'll see. I have pillow forms for them and will just do a standard envelope back on them, so except for the piping (if I go that route) they should be really easy to do. I'm in the middle of stitching a section on the Mira RR though, and having fun with that, so I'll probably wait to do the pillows until over the weekend.

Yes, I edited this after I realized I had missspelled "selvedge". :)