DIY Personalized Cushion Cover

While sitting with my family at night, I tend to admire the things that make my home feel homely- love, understanding, homemade food and a personal touch to all our household items. It is a wonderful feeling, getting creative with simple and small things and recycling old things to create new ones. In this article I will guide y’all to make a customized, homemade cushion cover out of an old shirt which makes your home feel more cheerful. We all have our favourite shirts, maybe our own, or that of a loved one whom we lost. We don’t use them but we keep them to preserve memories. In this way, we can preserve those memories and keep them with us forever.

Good news, this won’t cost you anything at all!

Are y’all thready for this?

Materials- Old shirt, scissors, thread, needle, pencil, scale, measuring tape, paints, brushes, rough cloth, water mug and creativity.

Steps-

1. Measure your cushion with a measuring tape

2. Add one extra inch to the measurements and mark the same on the shirt

3. Connect your markings with a straight line which is made using a scale and pencil

Secret stitch- Make sure you mark the measurements in a way that the pocket gets located on the top left/right corner

4. Cut along the lines. A normally used scissor may not be the best option to cut the cloth since a cloth needs a sharp scissor. Try using a new pair of scissors since they’re sharper. If you’re a first timer, the cut may not be very clean, but that’s okay. The uneven cut will eventually be hidden.

5. Overturn the cut out piece of shirt

6. Mark a border of 1cm from all ends

7. Stitch along the lines using a thread and needle. Start the stitch with a knot and 2 back stitches after which you can move ahead with running stitches. While you stitch, make sure that both your pieces of cloth are aligned with each other.

Secret stitch- Remember to keep a gap of 5 inches unstitched on any one of the sides of the cover so that you can outturn it later on

8. Outturn the cover

9. Open the buttons and place a box between the two layers

10. Draw and paint your thoughts using acrylic colours

11. Let it dry

12. Remove the box and put the cushion

13. Your personalised cushion cover made by recycling an old but favourite shirt is ready!

While normal cushion covers act as an aesthetic décor, this one will allow you to keep your belongings in its pocket. Phones, spectacles and masks fit into this cover perfectly well.

A few suggested designs

- If you’re someone who doesn’t like cloth painting (cloth painting can be more difficult than normal paper painting), then you can directly use a checked shirt.

- If you like a delicate design, you could work with laces. Stick the lace across the border of the cover using fevistick. You could also place the lace diagonally in a way that they intersect at one point.

- For a retro look, you can paint polka dots. For a plain and simple look, you could make different leaves, flowers or hearts. If you’re a movie buff, then you can just write a dialogue using either paints or a permanent marker. If you love books, write a quote.

- GO MOODY!

Here's a one minute video of the entire process of making a DIY Cushion Cover from a shirt