It’s been blizzarding here all day – for much of the morning it was a white-out!

Didn’t matter – I was sewing. Last weekend I agreed to make sofa cushions for a friend – her designer had specified “piping” on several of the pillows. Creating the piping is no big deal, but applying it – that’s another matter. I trimmed the piping so I could align the outer edge with the outside of the pillow fabric but corners are tricky – I discovered it was a good idea to snip the corner and then 1/2″ on either side of that snip in order to bring the piping around the 90°. The second challenge involved joining the piping – I cheated on that on the two large square pillows, I just overlapped the piping and stitched it in place. Next came putting the zipper in against the piping edge on one side. Because the cushion will be sitting on that edge I did the best I could and have left it at that (I could hand stitch that opening closed but I’m guessing nobody but me will ever notice the zipper isn’t put in perfectly evenly).

I’m happy with how the four pillows have turned out (the spotted pillow on the right belongs on my sofa!). They’ll look good on Heather’s new sofa.

She also has a hall bench that wanted a cushion – piped she decided, which makes construction quite a bit more difficult. It’s not just a matter of cutting out a top and bottom piece to fit the cushion form, but piping the top and bottom edges, along with inserting a zipper along the back side.

My bench is several inches shorter and wider but this cushion will fit Heather’s bench nicely and when it’s been sat on for a week, nobody will notice the imperfections that I can see. This time I took the time to butt the piping join – I did such a good job you can’t see where I joined the fabric/cord.

One pillow still to go. I don’t have the pillow form although I do have the fabric. This cushion needs to be done with a flange. There are several ways that can be done. I need to google for some instructions to make the job easier. I’ll make up the cushion cover – Heather will buy a queen size bed pillow and we’ll take it apart to make it fit the cover.

That last job I’m leaving for tomorrow.