Outdoor Pillows

I spent this past weekend making some pillows for the furniture on our new outdoor patio. I've made so many home decor items, and find this kind of sewing very satisfying. I have made so many window treatments that I have saved my family thousands of dollars. I'm not kidding. Have you ever gotten a quote for drapes?

If you are a beginning sewist, and need some practice on your straight seams, you've got it made! Window treatments are easy. The hardest part, seriously, is the math. Not ready for interlined and lined, pinch pleated floor to ceiling drapes? How about pillow covers?


Once you make pillow covers, you will never want to pay those expensive prices that you see. I haven't looked, but I suspect there are some pillow cover hacks for all those super cute pillows from the popular home decor stores.


I made 2 18" square pillows with an envelope opening on the back for the adirondack chairs which look great but can get kind of uncomfortable. The fabric is all specifically for outdoors, purchased from fabric.com. I made the cording from bias strips from the striped fabric and it's a super fat cording. I've had this stuff in my stash for a couple years, and I'm afraid I don't actually know the diameter.


A close up of how the opening looks in the back (and the cording):

But the bench...   I love how the bench cover turned out! The kidney shape had its challenges. I started with a piece of 2" thick foam from Jo-Anns that is the length of the bench, but was not quite the width. I made a pattern from newspaper taped together by tracing around the edge of the bench.

Have you ever worked with this kind of foam? It's grabby. I knew that it would be darn near impossible to just slide the cover over, so I first made a foam cover out of muslin. Oh, I cut the foam with a big knife. Kinda made a mess. From the scraps, I cut the end bits to made it wide enough and just glued them on with a craft glue.

Bench cushion, covered with foam scraps

I don't plan to ever remove this muslin cover, so I just slip-stitched the opening closed, but I'm using a zipper for the outside cover. The edge strip is 2" wide, and I inserted the zipper in the middle of the strip.

Yes, the zipper is brown, but you can't see it. Sewing it in the middle of the strip made it easier to sew the bottom piece on. If you use a similar technique, just remember to unzip the zipper, or you'll be stuck with it inside out! It turned out to be a perfect fit!