When Matthew and I started to seeing each other he complained that one of the first things I introduced into his house was tissues, up until then boxes of tissues were confined to the bedroom and bathroom. The next thing was cushions, I had a lot of cushions and once we were married these suddenly appeared on his sofa. Yesterday I made a new cushion and to possibly add insult to injury I made it from a pair of his jeans!
To be fair he had already donated them to my crafting, there was a hole in the knee and the hems had frayed. I had offered to patch the knee but he had declined.
When I was working on my Jeans for Genes day project I had seen cushions crafted from jeans but decided that they would use up too much material from my pair of jeans. However the idea was always there and so yesterday I decided to have a go and here is the result.
I wanted to do this woven pattern as I like the way it shows how the jeans wear, some of the strips go from very dark to very pale in a few inches. I already had a cushion pad so was making a 16″ square cushion. I also decided to make an envelope closing. It avoided zips! I had to spend quite a bit of time with the jeans working out where to take the different bits of fabric from allowing enough length for the strips and for the two back pieces. It was quite interesting as there was only just enough fabric and my husband is a tall man! Effectively the front is two 16″ squares.
I tore the strips (between 2 & 2 1/2 inches wide), which gives a very pleasing frayed edge. Then spent some time piecing them together and pinning all the ‘squares’, it is important to get the strips tight together as you don’t want gaps on the finished cushion.
I then turned over the edges of the back pieces, I chose the red thread as a contrast to the denim. I pinked the edges and then made a buttonhole. The pieces then had a good press before I laid them on top of the woven piece, taking care to ensure that the piece with the button hole would end up on the top!
Everything was pinned together, still keeping all the pins in the woven piece, before I marked out my sewing lines, making sure they were square and equidistant. When sewing I also made sure that the woven piece was on top so that I could make sure that all the pieces lay flat as they went under the needle.
Then I trimmed back the edges with pinking shears, cut the corners and turned it inside out. All that was left to do was to sew on the button (again a cheery red) and put the pad in. Then stand back and admire the finished product. I am really pleased with the result and I think Matthew is too! A satisfactory result from a pair of jeans destined to be thrown away.
elizabeth sarah crafts 