Mission Style Chair Cushion

New Cushion on Back

This is a unique Mission style arts and crafts chair. My customer made the chair and the ottoman and used a leather  hide to make the seats but didn’t have a sewing machine so he hired me to make the seat’s back cushion. He purchased a large hide for the material so I worked with authentic leather instead of vinyl. This was my first leather job and I found it was not too difficult to work with as I had anticipated. Of course it was quite a bit heavier than vinyl, which makes this chair very durable. 

Cushions are deceptively difficult to cover because you must make the cushion cover smaller than the foam so that when you insert the foam, it fills the cushion to the edges snugly. You never want a saggy, larger than foam cover. As most cushions, I installed a zipper on the underside so it can be slipped over the foam. There’s really no other way to create a cushion cover without a zipper. 

The installation itself is challenging because the larger the foam, the deeper you must reach to push out the foam to the material’s edges. This wasn’t a boxed cushion, but more like a pillowcase, so it was a different process that required rounded edges instead of the traditional boxed-cushioned edges as used on couches and large chairs. The chair was finished and my customer could enjoy his efforts as well and mine.