Outdoor Bench Cushion

I got a little ambitious yesterday and decided to make a cushion for the bench on our patio and an apron (post to come soon). 

We purchased this bench several years ago.  I like it, but it's kind of plain so I thought it would be nice to put a cushion on it.  However, it's a small bench, and I needed a custom cushion (I didn't think about taking photos while I was working so I only have photos of the final product)

Materials:
High-density Foam Padding (2 in.)
Fabric

How to:
I measured the bench and cut the foam padding to size (taking into account that the pad would actually need to be several inches smaller than the bench).  I used a small box cutter to cut the foam padding, though it probably would have been easier with a longer knife (I read about using a carving knife to cut foam padding on another blog).  I couldn't get the right fit with one piece of padding so I had to put two pieces together (other bloggers suggest gluing the two pieces together, but I didn't glue mine).

I made the fabric sleeve out of one continuous piece of fabric (I purchased one yard, which worked perfectly).  I opted to use the fold-over method, rather than using a zipper.  I've done this with pillow cases before, but the rectangular shape of the foam padding added new challenges.

I began by sewing a seam onto the two edges that would be exposed on the back of the sleeve, then sewed the corners so that it would fit the rectangular foam padding.  There are several ways to sew corners (check out some of the online tutorials if my method doesn't make sense).  I began by measuring and using a permanent marker (on the back-side of the fabric) to mark the edges of the fabric.  I was trying to minimize seams in this case so I folded the corners into a triangle (rather than cutting my fabric into 6 pieces) and sewed straight down (I'm not exactly sure how to explain that, especially without photos - to me it made sense when I wrapped the spot where I wanted a corner around the corner of the foam padding).  The next step was probably the most difficult, I had fabric from several different directions that all needed to be hidden under my fold-over flaps, while also covering the sides and back of the pad.  Eventually, I came up with a method to make it work (again, I'm apologize for not taking photos).  Once that was done, I sewed the two fold-over pieces together on each end (6-8 inches) so that the cover would fit tightly over the foam.  Lastly, I stuffed the foam padding into the cover!






I will admit that this was not the easiest project, but I like the way it turned out!