I am not as charitable towards timid knitters as I ought to be. Not becase I think they are allowed to be timid — I can't think of anything less intimidating than looping yarn — but because that makes me a hypocrite.
I am a phobic sewer. It's not the sewing so much as the stuff that comes up front: the cutting. Cutting terrifies me because once the fabric is cut, it's cut. If you cut too big, you're still maybe able to fix it, but if you cut the piece too small, the best you can do is think of something else to make.
So, I was very pleased with myself when I managed to sew a floor cushion using instructions I got at Apartment Therapy. The photos helped a lot, there was only one cut to make, and it seems I guesstimated the seam allowances correctly (the pattern is so stupidly easy they didn't bother specifying them). Try this next time you have two old bed pillows handy and feel like getting a quick project done.
I needed to chop about 3" off the end of fabric to make it the right size. It's just a straight edge, but it's also the first time I've cut this much fabric without making a slant or jaggy edges.
The directions called for slicing part of the pillows into strips and tying the strips together. My pillows were filled with little chips of foam, so that wasn't going to work. Instead I shook all the stuffing to one side and sewed them together, sort of a pillow version of a mad doctor's experiment with hybrid lifeforms.
Two of the corners had mock box shaping. I actually managed to achieve this!
Here's the finished pillow, complete with velcro-ish closure sewn in. The cover seems a bit big, but I guess that leaves "squish room" for when people sit on it.
I am a phobic sewer. It's not the sewing so much as the stuff that comes up front: the cutting. Cutting terrifies me because once the fabric is cut, it's cut. If you cut too big, you're still maybe able to fix it, but if you cut the piece too small, the best you can do is think of something else to make.
So, I was very pleased with myself when I managed to sew a floor cushion using instructions I got at Apartment Therapy. The photos helped a lot, there was only one cut to make, and it seems I guesstimated the seam allowances correctly (the pattern is so stupidly easy they didn't bother specifying them). Try this next time you have two old bed pillows handy and feel like getting a quick project done.
I needed to chop about 3" off the end of fabric to make it the right size. It's just a straight edge, but it's also the first time I've cut this much fabric without making a slant or jaggy edges.
Two of the corners had mock box shaping. I actually managed to achieve this!