Today I'm sharing a tutorial for making this colourful floral cushion (pillow) - including templates for 19 different flower shapes!
This project is the perfect example of how you don't need a lot of fancy sewing skills to make something awesome, just a bit of time and patience. It's a fab project for working on in front of the TV in the evenings, gradually building up the design to cover the cushion with flowers.
I used quite a bright palette for my cushion, but you could use any colours you fancy. You could also add extra detail by embellishing the flowers with embroidery, buttons, seed beads or sequins. I've been thinking about adding some embroidery to my cushion, so maybe I'll post an update to this tutorial one day!
You could also use the flower templates included in this post for lots of different floral projects, including card-making.
You'll probably recognise this cushion as the one from my blog header - I finished it before I
moved house and packed up all my things, and I've only just got round to unpacking it and borrowing someone else's living room to take photos (my living room is currently full of boxes and still doesn't have a sofa in it!).
Click here for the felt butterfly cushion tutorial, and
click here for the MAKE ALL THE THINGS cushion tutorial.
To make a felt flower cushion, you will need a cushion cover, some felt in lots of different colours, matching sewing threads, scissors (embroidery scissors are great for cutting out small or detailed shapes), a sewing needle, pins, and the flower templates at the bottom of this post.
1. Use the templates provided to cut out lots of felt flowers in different colours. Make sure you cut an assortment of shapes in each colour! Lay the flowers out roughly on your cushion cover so you can see if you've got approximately the right amount. I cut out one batch of flowers to start with then cut out some extras towards the end to fill in the final spaces.
You can easily enlarge the templates to make larger flowers, which will give your cushion a different look and also mean you have fewer pieces to cut out and sew.
2. Make sure you have matching threads for all your felt colours! For a different look you could use one thread to sew all the flowers in position, but remember that your stitching will then be more visible so try to keep your stitching neat and even.
3. Begin adding the flowers. Start in the centre of the cushion and work outwards, adding a few flowers at a time. Position the flowers and pin them in place, taking care to only pin them to the front of the cushion cover and not through all the layers of fabric.
Use sewing thread (in any colour) and large stitches to tack the flowers in position, removing the pins as you sew each one. Make sure you only sew through the front of the cushion! Then use whip stitch and matching sewing threads to sew the flowers neatly. Once you've sewn all the flowers in this batch, remove the tacking threads.
4. Work outwards, repeating step 3 to fill the cushion with flowers.
You may find it helful to cut more of the smaller flower shapes when you come to filling in the edges of the cushion.
When you've finished, your cushion cover will look something like this:
5. When all the flowers have been sewn in place and all the tacking threads have been removed, add a cushion insert and display your cushion in pride of place on your sofa!
For a no-sew version of this project, you could use fabric glue to
attach the flowers to the cushion cover. I'd recommend sticking one flower to a piece of scrap fabric first, to test how much glue you
need to use and placing something like a piece of plastic or tin foil
between the layers of the cushion to prevent the glue seeping through
and sticking the cushion together.
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This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it to make
as many floral cushions as you want for yourself and as gifts, but
please don't make any for sale. You may borrow a couple of photos if you
want
to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to
this page on my blog, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial / share my
templates on your
site. Thanks!
Click here to view template sheet one, make sure you're viewing it full size then print it at 100%.
Click here to view template sheet two, make sure you're viewing it full size then print it at 100%.
