How to make a patchwork cushion

My cushions on the sofa were boring me so I decided to recycle them and jazz them up a little.  The first cushion I chose was cream but a little tatty so I decided to replace the front with a patch work design.  I found pieces of material at home and bought a few squares of Cath Kidston fabric to tie all of the different colours together.




I cut each piece into a square that was 10cm x 10cm and spent a while arranging them on the table into a formation that I liked.  Once I had decided on the layout, I pinned rows of 4 squares together and then machine stitched them to create strips.  these strips were then pinned and stitched to create the front of the cushion.

For the quilting, I used some thick curtain interlining that I had left over and pinned this in regular intervals to the back of the large square.  Using a piece of chalk and a ruler I then marked out where my diagonal lines would go ensuring that they went through the corners of the smaller squares - to be honest, some of the squares were not perfectly in line but because I knew that I was going to put buttons on the the intersections I didn't really mind.  These lines were then all stitched.

I chose to decorate the cushion using buttons from my collection - anytime I buy a new garment that comes with spare buttons I keep them just in case!

Once completed, I used small strips of the original cushion to create a border.  Tip - before turning the cushion inside out, cut some of the bulk off at the corners diagonally as this will give a sharper finish.