I’m a big fan of the Finnish design house Marimekko. They’ve been making gorgeous fabric prints and homewares for 70+ years. The only problem is that their stuff can be very, very expensive (especially here in Australia). A few months back though they had a clearance sale, and I picked up a couple meters of the iconic Unikko print cotton at 40% off. Today I decided to use it to make a couple cushions for our new couch.

We already had a pair of old IKEA cushions with covers that were starting to fall apart. The feather inserts were still good though, so I removed the covers to see how they were constructed. They were rectangular — 59cm/23.25″ long by 37.5cm/14.75″ wide — with a lapped zipper along the bottom edge. I decided to make the new covers a little smaller so they’d feel a bit plumper. (They’d lost a couple feathers over the years!)

At this point Rodd was like, “So are you going to reuse the zippers?” I realised that was an excellent suggestion, so out came the seam ripper.

Once I worked out what size I wanted the new covers to be, I added on a bit for seam allowance and then cut out 4 panels from my fabric. I then used my overlocker to finish all the raw edges.

I’ve installed a few zippers in my time but I’m by no means an expert. I found this tutorial from The Sewing Directory to be really helpful. Once I had the zipper joining two panels together, it was very simple to sew around the other three sides.

And here’s the finished cover showing the lapped zipper! Why yes, I did sew one side of the zip with red thread and one with white, thank you for noticing. 😂

Here’s a cushion in all its plump glory. To buy one would probably be like $90 AUD, so my version came out a fair bit cheaper. (That’s discounting my own labour though, which you should never do if you’re actually selling stuff you create!)

Don’t they look lovely on the new couch? I might need to make some more…