- Week One: Elegant and Airy Dining Room Inspiration
- Week Two: Favorite Modern Dining Room Chandeliers
- Week Three: DIY Ribbon Trim Roman Shades
- Week Four: DIY Built-in Dining Room Banquette
I love the relaxed feeling of enjoying a meal and good company while lounging on a comfy banquette. I’m so excited that I have finally built our deep dining bench. Now, I have to add the cushions! I could not find pre-made cushions in the right dimensions, so I sewed my own covers!
I hope that my blog tutorials are helpful to others – at least, I know that sometimes I read my own older posts to remind myself how to do something! I made cushion covers for our window seat at our old house, so I looked up that post for instructions for our banquette cushions.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- cushions – You can get custom foam from many sources. I have bought cushions multiple times from Foam Factory, including these dining chair cushions!
- upholstery fabric – I was so excited to use this green velvet!
- hook and loop tape – total of 104″ sew-on strips for both mattresses
- thread, scissors, pins, general sewing supplies
Here’s how to do it:
For each mattress, cut your fabric as follows:
- 1 large piece that will wrap around the top, bottom, front, and back:
- length = depth of cushion x 2 + height of cushion x 2 + 3″
- width = width of cushion + 1″
- 2 side strips:
- width = height of cushion + 1″
- length = depth of cushion + 4″
- These are longer than the depth of the mattress, so they can wrap around the back to keep any of the mattress from showing.
zig-zagged the raw edges of each piece.
Lay the fabric centered over the cushion and mark where the front seams would be. (Pictured below)
I then folded the fabric at the seam and sewed with a 1/4″ seam allowance to create a clean seam for the front edges of the cushion. (Pictured below)
To attach the side panels, line up the end of the side panels with the front of the main panel (between the seams) and sew that small section with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. (top left picture below)
Next, turn and pin the long edge of the side panels in place and sew with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. Since the side panels are longer than the mattress, I marked on the main panel where the back edge of the cushion should be and sewed up to that point. (top right picture below)
After attaching all the side panels, I finished the ends of the panels by folding under a 1/2 inch hem and stitching. (Top left picture below)
I sewed one side of the Velcro to the outside of a back flap and the other side to the inside of the other back flap. (Top right picture below) It looks very neat when done!
I’m so happy with how these new cushion covers fit and look! A neat tip: to keep the cushions from moving around, I used a rug pad underneath.
I want to add some new throw pillows, but for now, here are some ones I already had:
And here’s a look back at my first bench cushion project 10 years ago!
I’ll keep posting progress updates on Instagram and a weekly post here with more details! Looking forward to the next steps of this project as well as checking out the other participants’ awesome posts. You can follow the whole event on the One Room Challenge website!
Julie AKA “Jewels”
