DIY Tassel Cushions

Last week I finally bought myself a new sewing machine, and it’s so exciting! After 3 years of heavy use my little yellow John Lewis machine gave up the ghost. I now have a Bernette, and you can change the feet! And it has a computerised front! And 60 stitches! It even does button holes and embroidered letters. I don’t think my life is going to be the same again. I don’t have a lot of time to sew at the moment, but I was dying to try it out so I made these fun tassel cushions! I was actually inspired by a very similar cushion that I saw in Anthropolgie for £60, and these cost me under £10 for two. DIY is the best! If you wanted a more sophisticated but more expensive cushion, you could definitely use embroidery thread instead of wool for the tassels.

You will need: Wool in a variety of colours, some fabric of your choice (I used under a meter of faux suede for two 50cm wide cushions), cushion innards, pins, scissors, measuring tape and a sewing machine.

First you need to make your tassels! I’ve explained how in a previous post. I made 28 per cushion.

Cut out your fabric! You will need one piece that is exactly the same size as your cushion innard and two pieces that are the same width but 2/3rds of the length of your cushion innard. If you’re feeling precise you could trace this onto newspaper first and use this as a pattern piece. I was feeling brave so I drew straight onto my fabric.

Hem one of the long ends from both of the smaller pieces of fabric. I just folded it over by 1cm, and then folded it over again by 1cm, pinned it and ran it through my sewing machine. Sometimes textured fabrics like this faux suede don’t go through my machine very smoothly so I put a sheet of tissue paper underneath the fabric as I’m sewing and then I can pull the tissue paper away once I’ve finished. This trick works for loads of things, including velvet and pleather!

Pin the tassels onto your cushion! This step took me forever to work out. You need to pin them onto the right side of your fabric so that the tassels are facing inwards.

Now you need to pin the two smaller pieces of fabric to the square piece, so that the right sides of the smaller pieces are together with the right side of the square piece. The smaller pieces should overlap in the middle (to form the opening for the cushion innard to go through.) Make sure that the ends of the tassels are poking out of the two pieces of fabric, like in the picture.

Sew all four sides together using a short stitch to keep the tassels firmly in place, snip off the corners and you have a pretty cushion cover!

I really love how colourful my sitting room is becoming, and these rainbow cushions certainly help! I almost have a full sofa of cushions, which makes me happy My new sewing machine makes simple projects like this so much quicker. Here’s to lots more rainbow projects in the future!