I Could Make That! The Papasan Cushion

We inherited a papasan chair from someone.  Or maybe we bought it at a garage sale.  I really don't remember.

What I do remember is that we ruined the pillow this winter.  We forgot to move the chair into the garage before it snowed (since this was The-Winter-That-Never-Was) with the result that the one time we got a decent amount of snowfall it filled the papasan like a bowl.  Matt tried to pull the cushion off to shake the snow out.  Lo and behold, the fabric was frozen to the wooden frame of the chair.  Riiiiiiiiiiipppp!

All of the sudden the guts were come out of the cushion all over the place.  After picking up a few wayward balls of fluff from the yard in the following weeks I came to the conclusion that I needed to make a great big pillowcase for it.  Something to keep all those guts in.

Johnny helped me pick out the fabric.  By that I mean, she laid on it and bathed herself while I rooted around in my stash.  She was right.  This was the one.

As it happens, I had been reading up on making circle skirts.  Using this knowledge as a starting point I folded a huge piece of floral into quarters, used a pen on a string to mark the radius I'd need, and cut along that line.  That left me with two big circles which I sewed together and finished with an absurdly long sport zipper.  I wan't sure how easy it would be to install a zipper along the curved outer edge of the pillowcase, but it was a snap.  I gotta say, I felt like a wicked genius (okay, slight exaggeration) about the whole thing.  Matt was so impressed that the pillowcase was round and not square, as he'd envisioned, which was very gratifying.  He is so supportive of my sewing.

I'd always wondered what I'd do with a nylon zipper that was three feet long....

The whole thing cost me essentially nothing, save thread and my time--and it didn't even take much of latter.  The zipper was part of a 20-for-$2 garage sale deal.  The fabric was something I already had, no doubt a gift from my mother.  I did have to piece a couple smaller segments together to get the width I needed for such a large pillowcase.  The leave and vine motif on the fabric seemed well suited for the patio.

Needless to say, the papasan is looking MUCH better.  Ginger approves of the new cushion, which is good since she sits in at much as anyone else around here.  I can't blame her.  The view over the garden is good.

The view.