Cushion Rejuvenation Session 3: Cutting Perfect Squares

Now that we know exactly what size our fabric pieces need to be, it's time to cut them. So the biggest problem that I have had recovering cushions is that when you cut your pieces, you don't have good right angles. So then your sides kind of end up going like this instead of like this and you have a trapezoid instead of a rectangle. So anyway, if you can use a cutting mat and a rotary cutter, these have perfect right angles printed on them. So that way you can bind your fabric up against a right angle and cut another right angle. That means that your squares will always be or I'm sorry, the corner of your rectangles will always be perfect right angles. Now, in our case, our cushion is, let me look at my math, it's 20.5 by 27, so this mat is clearly way too small for what we're doing. So I can't use it. I'm gonna set it aside. I've got a piece of fabric here and I have two options. First, I can either draw on the back of my fabric which is what I'm gonna do in this case because I'm only making one cushion, and I'm going to just use one of those iron-off pens so that I can wash and it'll come out, or as soon as I iron it, the ink will go away. Or if you're gonna make multiple cushions like one for every dining chair then it might be nice to have a pattern piece. So this is exam table paper, and it's very thin and it's cheap and you can just buy it on the web and you can get a case of it. And we use it all the time. If it's not wide enough, we'll tape it together. But it's a really nice way to make patterns. So you can either draw this next part on exam table paper or you can draw it right on the back of the fabric that you're gonna use. It's entirely up to you. So since I'm just making one cushion, I'm gonna go ahead and just use the back of my fabric here. So I'm gonna push it this way. Now, you can already tell by looking at this, that where I cut it is definitely not a right angle, okay? Now the selvage edge over here might be a writing goal, but I don't know, I feel like you should just never use one of the edges as your start. Sometimes the fabric can be printed strangely. Now I can see through this fabric but I can also kind of see the grain going across here. So I'll know if my fabric, you know, if my rulers and my lines are ingrained with the fabric. So if you cannot use your cutting mat to make a right angle, the next best thing, and my dad taught me this, is to use a carpenter's square. Now, those things are kind of hard to find, they're a little expensive, they're definitely hard to tote around with you. So what I do instead, is I take two of these rulers and I'll turn them over so they slide, they'll be backwards put, and if you put them together like this, this right here of course is a perfect right angle, right? So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna bring in my painter's tape, this is all my dad's doing, all of these things you would find in the garage. I'm gonna put these together like this, And then you can just get a little bit of painter's tape on there so that they stays in place. Now, my rulers aren't quite long enough to map out my entire piece, but this is enough to really get me going. So I'm gonna pull this over here and I wanna make sure I have the width. I don't know if you can see through the fabric as well as I can, but there's a bird right here and this is his head and these are his feet. And I know I want my cushion to be wide like this, so I want my longest edge down here and that's gonna be 27. So up at the top, looking at my math, it's 20.5. So what I'm gonna do now is grab my iron-off pen. I'm gonna scoot this as close to the selvelage edge as I can, so I can make sure and I get the fabric, and then I'm just gonna kind of twist my ruler here so that I can make sure it's going along with the grain of the fabric. So now that we can see that, look at this, this selvelage edge is definitely not a right angle. You can see it's a little skinnier down here and wider up here. So it's always good if you don't use an edge. So I'm gonna go ahead and just scribble my line over here and I'm going to, what was it? 20.5, so I'm gonna start at 20.5 and I'm gonna scribble and come down and meet this line, okay. And now, I'm going to do this all the way over here until the ruler basically ends, at 24. Now, because I'm using an iron-off pen, I have to go to 27, right? So I'm just gonna write 24 right there where my line ends, so I don't forget what my measure was, gonna unroll this a little more. I'm gonna finish this one by sliding this way. So I'm just gonna put my 20 line, right on the edge there. I'm gonna make sure my ruler is lined up on my line right back here, so I continue to have a nice angle, and I'm gonna give it 24, just three more inches. One, two, three, all right. So I wanna make sure this is a right angle, so I can just swivel this around, like this, get this open here, and I wanna match this nice long line I made right there, okay. Just like that, and this needs to be 20.5, so I'm just gonna draw this, all the way up until I hit. Oh, actually this is a good point. Look at this one, two, three, four, five. I've got a little extra on here, see that. So, ooh, I'm glad I realized that before I cut too big of a piece, so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna swivel this around, and we're gonna go this direction, like this. Cause I know I'm good on this side, this is why I have a whole section dedicated to math. Okay, so we're gonna go like this, that looks great. I'm gonna scribble all the way over here and then I'm gonna continue my line this way making sure it is a nice continued angle, just like that. Okay, so now I can break my square here and I have my first piece for my cushion. Now I could choose to draw another one of these or I could flip it and add another one into here, or I could cut this out and use this as a pattern. It's kind of up to you. So I am just going to cut this particular one out and then I'm gonna pin it on to the next part, and then I'm gonna cut a second one out, so. I'm just gonna cut right along all the lines I drew until my very first piece is cut out. Then I'm gonna just put this on another piece and pin it, and then cut around the edge, since I'm only making one cushion. And I am very confident that I have perfect right angles. So the next one I cut, obviously neither of them will be wonky, which is really nice. So I'm gonna finish cutting these out. The very first thing we have to do before we can sew the whole thing together is we have to set our zipper. So we are gonna talk about how to set a zipper next.