DIY project: Outdoor cushion covers

This is something I've been planning on doing for aaaages! Not particularly appropriate for this time of the year I'm afraid. But, I'm far too impatient to save this one for Spring, so here goes!

We had four lovely outdoor cushions that we inherited along with the outdoor furniture, but they are starting to show their age. So I decided to spruce them up! Back earlier in the year I raided a design guild warehouse sale in White City and scored some fantastic bolts of material and decided this was the project for it!

This is the 'before' pic, our four perfectly formed cushions, in need of a new lease of life:

Then find your perfect fabric. I went with a fairly thick fabric, so hopefully durable. It has a watercolour wash finish, which will hopefully disguise the smaller trials and tribulations of outdoor eating. And bright bold strips which remind me of deck chairs - they scream British summer (think bright blue skies and a stiff cool breeze, hehe).

The how to is fairly simple, it can be done with a sewing machine or by hand (I started by hand and admittedly it was taking a while!). I took one cushion and made a pattern by drawing around it and adding an inch for the seams. I then cut out the 8 sides required and tried to ensure that the stripes would line up when sewed together (easier said than done!).

Once lined up in pairs, I pinned them together (inside out) and sewed around the outside. I left a gap of a good few inches at the back to turn the cushion cover inside out and then squeeze the cushion in through! Once we had a snug fit and were happy with the result I sewed up the gap with a topstitch. If you wanted to have removable covers you could sew in a zip (tricky!) or some velcro (much simpler!) across the gap for easy access.

As simple as 1, 2, 3 (pinning, cutting, sewing!)

I left the covers a little bit roomy and then sewed through the cushion at four points to give the cushions the same shape and added four buttons to each side to hold them together. The final result looks a little bit like this...

Close up, check out the contours!

With the table set :)

All ready for a lazy afternoon in the garden...(okay maybe it's a but chilly to actually sit out there right now!) 

On another note - can you believe this last shot was taken in DECEMBER - look at all the bushes and creepers still in flower. Bloomin' ridiculous! (If you'll excuse the pun.) Shame it hasn't been warm enough (or dry enough) to sit out there and actually enjoy them (story of the year!).

And as a final sneaky bonus, this is what you get when you ask the man-about-the-house to pose for a action shot:

They say never work with animals or children....or boyfriends! 

Cheers m'dear! :)