Make a Box Corner Cushion - The 30 Minute Cushion

this video is brought to you by sailrite visit sailrite.com for all your project supplies tools and instructions in this video tutorial we'll show you how to make a box corner cushion if you're making the average size cushion it can be made in 30 minutes and made from a single piece of fabric hi i'm eric grant with sailrite today we're going to show you how to make a boxed corner cushion like this one on the back edge of the cushion there is a zipper opening to insert the foam if you follow our techniques and if you use the sailrite fabric calculator on your phone or computer you should be able to make a cushion like this in about 30 minutes it's likely that you're going to need some foam let's have a very short discussion about foam this is a good time to talk about foam let's talk about density density has to do with the longevity of the foam if you're using a foam and you know you're only going to be sitting on it or using it for two to three hours every week you can go with an occasional use foam which is really a medium or low density foam but if you're going to be using the foam for several hours every single day you need to go with a high density foam that way it'll last years now let's talk about ifd that has to do with the firmness of the foam and the firmness is a preference here you have a fairly firm foam it doesn't compress much here you have a medium firmness and here you have a very firm foam doesn't compress hardly at all so firmness doesn't have to do with longevity it has to do with comfort and that is a preference there are two types of foam here one is a dry fast it has large open holes the idea is that if this foam gets wet it dries out quickly so it's great for outdoor applications here's a polyurethane foam this foam can soak up water so if it's used outdoors we recommend that you wrap it in a silk film to help prevent water from getting to the foam we do not recommend that you wrap dry fast with silk film it's easy to make this cushion using sailrite's fabric calculator that's what we'll show next to make this 30 minute cushion visit the sailrite website and scroll all the way to the bottom of the website there you will find a resource called fabric calculator click on that then click on cushions here you will find a variety of cushions click on box corner cushions the 30 minute cushion and now we can enter our measurements for the desired cushion that we want ours is 14 by 35 and our foam is 4 inches thick we'll be using a 54 inch wide fabric if you have questions about any one of these selections click the question mark for more details we'll leave the orientation to width and hit the calculate button now we can see the key dimensions a list of materials and a rendering below the first one we want to take note of is the size of foam that we need to cut later on we'll explain more about the sailrite fabric calculator right now we need to cut the foam to size the finished width and length of my cushion is 14 by 35 the cut size of foam according to the fabric calculator is 14 and a half by 35 and a half we've chosen to use a four inch thick high density polyurethane foam that's available from sailrite here we're using a clear acrylic ruler to mark the foam to the size that we need to cut we're going to use the sailrite blade foam saw this is great for high density foam this is a polyurethane high density foam an electric kitchen knife will not cut it as easily but this one does a phenomenal job you can also use an electric kitchen knife it doesn't work as well with high density foams but for medium density foams it works great this is a high density foam so it would be rather difficult you do have to hold it so that it's perfectly straight vertical so here's the side that we cut with the electric kitchen knife not too bad don't worry about inconsistencies like this they will not show up and here's the side we cut with the sailrite blade foam saw it's almost perfect like a factory edge if you're using your old foam then all you need to do is measure it and subtract a half inch from the length and width then enter those calculations into the sailrite fabric calculator for the width and length of your cushion so now we have a four inch foam that is 14 and a half inch by 35 and a half inch what if i have to make an extra large cushion and have to join fabric together we're going to discuss that now so here's an example of a very large cushion and it required two panels to be sewn together if when you put your measurements in the fabric calculator you notice that you need two or more panels we recommend that you watch the video at the top right corner here just click the icon then come back to this video to see how it's constructed if you're building an average size cushion that does not require panels to be sewn together it's now time to cut the fabric to size the orientation is set to width already and we calculated for that which puts the zipper shown in red along the width of the fabric you can see that in the panel rendition down here so the red is the zipper now if we go up here and we click on length and then hit calculate notice that the zipper is now on the running length of the fabric so it's on the right side in the left side we want it to be on the width for our application it all depends on how you want the fabric orientated so i'm going to click on width and i'm going to hit the calculate so this is what we're going to go for here in regards to orientation which is better length or width well that can depend on the fabric's pattern do you want the pattern to go down the width or the length side but it can also depend on the amount of fabric you want to use this is a different size cushion we orientate the fabric to the width and click calculate and you can see the panel rendition looks good and we use 1.65 yards of fabric however if we switch it to the orientation of length and hit the calculate button now we use 2.53 yards and we also have a seam where we have to join two panels together i don't want to do that and i don't have to worry about a fabric pattern so i will switch the orientation back to the width and hit the calculate button again now this will only use one panel of fabric rather than two now this is always dependent on the size of the cushion but the point is to play with the orientation until you get the best option for your application now we'll go back to the cushion that we're making so in the key dimensions we need to cut the size of the fabric to 36.24 by 39.5 and then it says the 39.5 side runs along the width of the fabric the sailrite fabric calculator will also show you a list of materials and the required amount of materials you need for your particular cushion click on one of these links here like decor and upholstery fabrics and you can select from thousands of gorgeous fabrics that'll work great for your cushion application so the fabric calculator says my width which is along this direction for me is 39.51 now i can position that in the middle of the fabric but my pattern doesn't really dictate exactly where that should rest so i can put it anywhere your fabric may have a pattern that means that you may have to center it in the middle of the fabric to make it look best some fabrics unravel fairly easily if i cut this with scissors here and then if i pull on the fabric you can see lots of unraveling if a fabric does this you may want to choose to cut it with a hot knife to prevent this even though this will be on the inside of the cushion stragglers like this can be cumbersome inside a cushion so i recommend cutting a fabric that does this with a hot knife we place the tempered cutting glass on the bottom side then we can use our hot knife without causing damage to the table top surface below and it's also a very smooth surface for cutting the fabric now that our fabric's cut to size it's time to concentrate on the four corner notches we're going to first start with the corner notches that we're going to cut out of the fabric so wide for us is this way back and forth and deep is this way the rendering down below shows that as well we want to cut this on the back side so we want to mark our fabric on the back side fabric calculator says to cut corner notches 1.78 inches wide by 1.67 inches deep we're using the clear acrylic ruler and we place it on one of the four corners and we make sure that it is perfectly parallel along the sides the width for us is 1.78 which is about one and three quarter so we go in one and three quarters here and then for the depth which is up and down it's 1.67 which is about 1 in 11 16. now i'll take a pencil and i'll mark that cut out notch and this is the corner notch that will cut out for all four corners again we're going to use a hot knife to cut this corner out we're using the sailrite edge hot knife we have one that is corded and one that is battery operated it's brand new check it out at the sailrite website we will cut out the other three corners in the same manner that we did this one then we'll move on to the center notches now we're going to concentrate on the center notches there are two of them to cut the center notches for us the calculator says 1.78 inches wide by 2.1 inches deep remember this is the width and this is the depth for us an easy way to find the middle is to fold your fabric directly in half making sure the corners are lined up perfectly once you find the center you can mark it with a fabric pencil or just a regular pencil repeat this on the other side at the other fold so here's the center notch and we want the depth to be 2.1 so we want the center notch to be in the middle of our depth so that's basically divide that by two and we get 1.05 so very close to one inch and then we go 1.78 which is one and three quarter all right there so i'm going to put a mark here and then i'm going to mark across the top a little bit long nobody's going to see that and now 1.05 from the center line which would equal 2.1 to mark this line and that's our center notch we'll do that to this side and the other we'll use a hot knife again because this is a woven fabric that has a tendency to unravel to cut the cinder notches out we'll do this on this side and the opposite so this is the wrong side and this is the right side and now we have all four corners and middle positions cut out of our fabric so this is what yours should look like depending on the size as you can see a single piece of fabric will make this entire cushion now we need to add the zipper the zipper allowance is .62 inches and it will be that way for all cushions we'll multiply that times two and we get about a one and a quarter inches so along the location for the zippers which is shown in red we want to use the clear acrylic ruler again and strike a line that is one and a quarter inches from the edge of the fabric what do i mean by showing in red well that's in the panel rendition on the sailrite fabric calculator we'll do this on both sides we will then apply double-sided tape to the outer edge very close to the outside edge this seam stick allows for easy hemming we'll use the cerak canvas patterning ruler to adhere it well to the fabric then we'll peel off the transfer paper revealing the glue now we'll fold to that line that we struck this is the underside of the fabric the basting tape holds everything in place makes it easy for sewing you do this on both sides then to make sure it sticks we'll use the sailrite canvas patterning ruler to crease it well we're using a number five coil zipper and you can see the teeth are higher here and on the underside the teeth are basically not visible here so this is the underside of the zipper and this is the outside surface of the zipper we're going to apply double-sided tape down both flanges we want this double-sided tape which is a quarter inch in size to be as far away from the zipper's teeth as possible so the glue doesn't show up when we're done this double-sided tape or seamstick for canvas and upholstery is an acrylic based glue so it doesn't yellow over time you leave it in now we'll peel off the transfer paper and reveal the glue on one side of the zipper then we'll take the zipper and we'll flip it and we'll baste it along the line or the hem edge we want one to two inches to overlap in other words come past the edge of the fabric here so i'm going to leave about one inch or so two inches is acceptable as well and i baste it down right to this edge part of the reason that this is a quick cushion to make is the fact that we're using double-sided tape it makes everything easy so when i turn my assembly now you can see that the fold the of the fabric is almost directly in the center of the zipper that's what we want now i like to flip the fabric over like this partially and then pull the fabric down towards me and then take this side and flip it to the zipper now i'll take off the transfer paper revealing the glue on this side of the zipper flange then we'll start basting by making sure these ends are matched up so we want the ends to match up and we want to basically baste this to the zipper so that the zipper is concealed like this so the folds are directly across from each other now we will take the zipper and i'll actually break the zipper apart here but not remove it from our fabric we're just separating the two halves to sew this cushion we're going to be using the sailrite ultrafeed lsz-1 sewing machine and it's set up in the ultrafeed collapsible sewing table i'm going to set my stitch length for this woven fabric to about four millimeters i'm sewing with the zipper facing up and i'm going to use the presser foot and place it right along the teeth of the zipper my needle i will move to the right position to get closer to the teeth so i'm going to move this over i'm in straight stitch do a little bit of reversing at the beginning here and just sew down the zippers edge it's a good idea to check tension to make sure you're happy with it and it looks great repeat that procedure for the opposite half of the zipper we will not show all of this we'll use that seamstick to baste and then sew the sides of the cushion that's nice so this is the right side the decorative side of the fabric this is the wrong side so we have the right side facing up we're going to be folding this in half and sewing a half inch here and a half inch here so we'll apply our basting tape down one of these edges here we don't have to do it to the other one and on this side when i'm using the basting tape or seamstick you'll notice that i rip it instead of cut it at the end that way i have a little bit of a tail that i can grab onto and remove the transfer paper now because the cushion will be sewn together it's a good idea to peel this up a little bit and put some double-sided tape along this edge on the outside corners so we'll do this for all four of the outside corners just a piece of double-sided tape like that now the hot knife cut a little bit deep into this not a big deal because we're going to take a half inch seam allowance here at the middle cutouts we'll put basting tape along this inner edge the depth we do not need to put it here we'll do that on the other side as well now we'll peel the transfer paper off of the edge only not these corners on both sides now we'll fold this so that outside surfaces are facing each other and we'll baste those outer edges so that everything lines up or is directly on top of itself like that and the same thing over here now i want to sew a half inch seam so i'm going to use my deluxe five and a half inch magnetic guide and i'm not going to put it like this like i normally do but i'm going to put it right there on the half inch mark of the needle plate and i also have to remember to move my needle to the center position otherwise it's not a half inch seam allowance so now i have a half inch seam allowance and i want to make sure that i do some reversing at the beginning so i'm going to hold my trailing threads and i'm going to sew and then i'm going to make sure i reverse because this is going to come under some stress here okay now we'll sew down this leg now when i get to the bottom side or this corner i should say i want to do reversing there as well now do the same thing to the other side we will not show that sewing the boxed corners is next so the sliders facing the on the correct way i run the zipper so that hopefully they are fairly even and i push the slider into place this is a non-locking slider which in my opinion is very important for a cushion just makes the job easier you could use a locking but why go to the trouble now your goal here once the slider is in place is to make sure that the ends of the fabric are lined up pretty good so they look pretty good like that i'm going to pull the slider all the way through i know this seems crazy but this is the only way to get the ends to be closed up then i'm going to take the slider and open this up again so i open that up and i'm going to reinstall the slider in the exact same way this way i have a closed up zipper i'll show you that so now i can push my slider to the middle of the cushion and both ends are closed up so now we can lift this up and kind of open it up it's a little bit tight but i can peel off the transfer paper of that double-sided tape that we put on earlier don't worry if you've sewn into the transfer paper at the seam allowance it's not a big deal which i did and i'll peel it off this side as well that reveals the glue just rip it at where we sewed then i'm going to take these and i'm going to fold them in so watch what i do here so i fold it at the corners and i want to match up this edge with this edge always try to line up the side seam with the center of the zipper as well and now this side's basted well i don't like this side so that's the beauty of double-sided tape you can peel it back up again and you can reposition it if it's not perfect it's not a big deal in the end it'll still look great there we go so that corner is ready for sewing now let's do this corner so the double sided tape is on the inside i'm going to peel off the transfer paper and then i'm going to pull the corners out like this and match up the edges and baste it down there we go so it should look like that now we'll do that to the other side the same process so this is the side without the zipper and we want this to fold nicely so there's no bumps at the top so in other words i've got a basically an exaggerated corner because i want it to lay nice and flat now the seam allowance we want to fold all on the same side so when i go over here to do the zipper if this is folded here i want this to be folded here if it were folded here i would want this to be folded here so i want my fabric to splay out nicely no wrinkles to be laying flat and being an exaggerated corner so that it lays flat where everywhere we're going to sew and we're going to sew a half inch from that edge an exaggerated corner just means that i've splayed it out as flat as possible at the corner now it's important to do some reversing here at the beginning and i actually sew off one stitch or so just to make sure that that edge is reinforced well we'll sew over the half inch seam allowance and when we reach this corner we'll sew off a little bit and do some reversing and that's what the corner should look like on this side repeat that procedure for the opposite center notch so my seam allowance is the same as it is over here down i'm going to fold i'm going to sew with that on the underside this time so everything's nice and flat i've pulled out the fabric so that i get a good exaggerated triangle here and now i'm going to move the magnetic guide because i'm going to sew past this zipper here the zipper's too long right now which is fine i'm going to use my my half inch mark on the needle plate here in retrospect i probably would have cut the zipper right flush with the edge of the fabric i just didn't do it here i'm going to lower the presser foot and we're going to do some reversing now don't sew all the way through this yet we want to reinforce that zipper so i've sewed outside and did definitely plenty of reinforcing there we're going to use some of the scrap that we cut and just fold it in half and we're going to lay it right over top of the zipper okay basically right on that edge i'm going to sew through that and the zipper one of the nice things about using the number five coil zipper available from sailrite is that it's small enough that most home sewing machines can sew right through the teeth i'm gonna do reversing here now that reinforces the zipper well and closes up that corner so this is what it should look like when you're done if you were to measure the stitch you just made it should be about a half inch shorter than the thickness of the foam we're just going to cut off this excess zipper here on both sides you're almost done all you need to do is insert the foam that's next to turn it right side out we'll just split the zipper open and flip the assembly now you need to make sure that you push the corners out with your fingers my fingers are on the inside of the cushion it makes it much easier to stuff the foam and get the foam to lay in the right spot okay we're going to be using a polyurethane foam and this cushion may be used outdoors so we're going to put silk film over the foam to keep it from getting wet and it also makes it much easier to install the foam into the cover so i have about 20 inches of extra silk film on this side and this side and i'll cut it the silk film from sailrite is center folded so we're going to splay it open which will make it 54 inches wide so i have the silk film wrapped around the foam we do not tape it so the silk film is wrapped all around it and i have plenty overlaying it one thing you can do with silk film is uh use a vacuum and leave an opening towards the end that has a zipper put the vacuum on the foam not on the pla on the silk film and then wrap the silk film around the end of the vacuum then turn it on now with a high density foam it won't compress as much as a medium density foam but it still will compress so now i'll turn on my vacuum if the silk film does not start to cling to the foam you may have a gap or a hole that needs to be covered not using silk film don't worry about it you don't have to compress the foam like this to get it in the cover you may have to work it hard to get it in the cover but she can still do it without the silk film now my cover is ready so i can start to insert the foam i'll try to leave the vacuum on the foam this high density foam does not compress nearly as much as a medium density foam does but as you can see it still makes it much easier to get the foam inside the tight fitting cover now once it's inside it'll start to expand again and if it's taking a while you can just open up the back a little bit here because we are going to be cutting this away because we don't want this get in the way of the zipper there we go so we open it up and now look at it it's expanding well so that's one way to put foam inside of a cushion cover by using silk film in a vacuum it doesn't always have to be done that way it just makes a little bit easier now this silk film at the zipper should really be removed so that we can allow the air to escape from the silk film and also so that the zipper doesn't get caught on the silk film so i'm going to open up the back end here as you can see here and then i'll cut away some of the silk film along this back edge if we don't allow the air to escape when an occupant sits on the cushion it'll blow up like a balloon so once the corners are pushed out and the silk film's out of the way we can zip it shut make sure you do not zip the slider through the silk film as you can see this is a very easy cushion to make average sized cushions can be done in about 30 minutes and the cover is very tight fitting for a premium look this cushion is also totally flippable up next is the materials list and the tools that we used but the sailrite fabric calculator also gives you a list of materials and the quantities that are needed for a cushion of your size if you have any questions about the fabric that you'd like to use or the foam be sure to give us a call or email us we're glad to help it is only through your loyal support to sailrite that makes these free videos available thanks for your loyal support i'm eric grant and from all of us here at sailrite thanks for watching

Channel: Sailrite

Views: 1,365,314

Keywords: cushion making, diy cushion, sew a cushion, easy cushion making, box corner cushion, best cushion making technique, make your own cushions, sailrite cushion making, diy cushion cover, cushion, fast cushion, easy cushion, cushion done quick, simple cushion, sewing a cushion, make cushion fast, DIY cushion, DIY sewing, how to make a cushion, how to sew a cushion, how to make a basic cushion

Id: mMm_irFrbHQ

Length: 28min 16sec (1696 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020