Another Stitchers Guild update and Household sewing: ivory cushions

First up another update on Stitchers Guild from the PR thread for those who are not members there.
DragonLady wrote on 18th Jan.

Hello again, everyone :)

I'm just posting to let you know SG is still being worked on.

The forum actually works now; but the database it's connected to is from November. We've been trying to get the recent backups installed, but as the files are huge it's a long and laborious process.

I want to reassure everyone this is not a hacking issue, nor is it a financial one. All websites -all of them- go down occasionally. Larger sites often straddle several machines or have mirror sites that take over when one machine goes down. But SG only sits on one server, and so when it hiccups everyone feels it. When something goes catastrophically wrong, we all just have to wait for the engineers and web elves to fix it.

In the meantime, I'm unable to send or receive email, and unable to post any messages on the server because it will just contribute to the ongoing issues.

But I promise no one has abandoned the effort, and that we're all working together to make sure we do everything we can to get back up-to-date if at all possible.

Although some SG members are now posting more on PR, I'm not one of them although I am a member there. I've gained extra workload at work and thought it would be sensible to get back into sewing again, so I've not spent lots of time on PR.

Back in November I had some chairs I was going to change to fit more with my colour scheme.
These will go in the conservatory with an old Ikea kitchen table.

Original Post about the chairs

I didn't have enough of anything a suitable colour in my large fabric stash. (I wanted an ivory colour that toned with my other chairs in case I did something where I extended the large table and used all the chairs together).

So I went along to the local roll end shop and bought I think 3m of a slightly stretchy cream home dec fabric.

Original post about the home dec fabric

Then I painted the chair frames with 3 or 4 coats of vanilla radiator enamel left over from several houses ago. It needed a lot of stirring and was a bit thin hence all the coats but it did cover over the grey metal eventually.

Then I just had to park any further work, so I put the painted chair frames in the garage out of the way and decorated the conservatory for Christmas.

Now I've just started to work on them.

I made a template for the front of the back rest, the back of the back rest and for the seat out of newspaper and used these to cut the pieces out of fabric. These newspaper patterns are very rough and ready, not symmetrical etc, however they helped me use the fabric economically and whilst fitting to the actual pieces is still needed, there is less excess fabric in the way.

I cut these out first so I then knew how much fabric I would have to make covers for other cushions to co-ordinate in the conservatory.So far I have made matching ones for the back and seat of the wicker chair I have in the conservatory as this makes it more comfortable, and have some left over for a foam seat pad on a storage box and maybe some small side cushions as well.

This just uses soft squishy cushions, with inners that are homemade from a sheeting remnant in a neutral tone, filled with pillow wadding and a simple wrap style closure. I realise that I could have cut foam to fit, made more fitted covers with zipper closures etc, but this is super comfy and the square cushions can be used on the sofa or elsewhere instead when wanted. Plus it only took one evening to make. I quite like the relaxed vibe the oversized cushions give. It seems quite inviting to me in a way tailored cushions don't.

I'll share again when I've done some more sewing.
And after this I have lots of curtains to shorten. I dislike shortening curtains, but I also dislike them hanging over the radiators or crunched onto the windowsill so I WILL get round to shortening them very soon!