Hey you guys welcome back to the channel, Cayleigh here! As a lot of you know if you've
been following along we have converted this 2005 dodge sprinter in to our dream home on wheels over
the past six months. I wanted to make a quick video to go over making these cushions because
when I was looking online the cushions were super expensive and I couldn't find any that
were exactly the size that we built our bench or exactly the color or the style that I wanted so it
was actually relatively simple to make. It did take me a couple hours but I am a total newbie
when it comes to sewing so if I can do it you can do it. So as you can see it is pretty simple,
we've just got two cushions and then we've got this back plate here. So the cushions
both have a zipper on the back which is very handy because although this is indoor outdoor
material, obviously we've got Bailey in here and if it gets dirty we want to be
able to take them off and give them a wash! So we can very easily do that
and then this back piece here actually just hooks on like that and it's just a piece of
plywood and it's just got some batting and some material on it. So i actually made these buttons.
Super, super easy we will get into that right away! So obviously if you're watching this video
you are converting your own camper van and you probably have a different layout or at
least different sizes than we have here but I'm going to show you what we have and what works
for us and you can kind of modify accordingly. So under our bench seats we just kind of lined the
top here with some auto lining material we use it for our shelf and a couple different things
just to make these look finished and it also helps the cushions from sliding around and under
this bench here we've got a little shoe rack I'm gonna line the inside with this material too
but you can also access it from the back and put your shoes in which we're pretty pumped about.
And then under this other seat here we have got another storage cubby. So I'm sure that
you guys have got the point by now that David and I are all about the storage. It was the one thing
in the camper van that we rented that we didn't feel like there was enough of so we're working
very hard to make use of all of our space. So for this project you are going to want some three inch
foam. You're going to want some batting, some material...I got an indoor/ outdoor and two
meters of it was plenty for this. If you have a larger space you will probably need more material.
You'll obviously want a sewing machine and two zippers is what i used for my two cushions if you
have three cushions you'll need three zippers and then finally for the back piece you're gonna want
a piece of plywood. You're gonna use more batting some material and however many buttons you want
to incorporate if you want to put the buttons on there. I'll show you how to cover them up with
fabric and just because our van is curved here we put a 1x4 down at the bottom just to kind of
level out the backboard depending on where your seat is and what the wall behind looks
like you may or may not need that. Now step one is to figure out how big your cushions
are gonna be and how many cushions you're gonna have. So you are going to measure out the area
and ours is about 54 1/2 inches long and 14 1/2 inches wide so I decided to make two cushions and
they are actually not exactly the same. So one cushion is 28 inches and one cushion is 26 and
a half inches and that's just because our storage cubbies are not equal in size so our shoe cubby
is a little bit smaller than our storage cubby and I wanted the cushions to sit kind of right on the
seam. Next up is cutting your foam, so once you have your cushion sizes measured you're gonna cut
the foam to that exact size so one piece of foam I cut to 28 inches by 14 and a half inches and the
other piece I cut to 26 and a half by 14.5 inches. I just used an exacto knife to cut the foam and
I drew out and measured on both sides of the foam so started on one side cut it out to about halfway
flip the foam over cut out the other side and that just helps to kind of keep your cut even.
Next up you're gonna add some batting. So first of all just place your piece of foam onto the sheet
of batting trace around it and cut around the edges on both sides so the top and bottom both
have a piece of batting that will fit on them. I just used a spray adhesive to attach the batting
to the foam and then I actually wrap the foam once in each direction with a full loop of batting and
I use the spray adhesive and that just gives my cushions a much fuller look which I like. Next up
you're going to start cutting the fabric, so you want to cut one piece for the top and one piece
for the bottom. And take your original dimension so mine was 28 inches by 14 1/2 inches and you
want to add a half an inch for each side so add an inch in total to each of your dimensions so my 28
by 14 and a half cushion will have material that is 29 by 15 and a half. Once you've got those cut
we're gonna move on to the boxing around the cushion now to measure that you're gonna add
up all four sides and then subtract the length of the side that you want your zipper on. So for
me I wanted my zipper on the back so I added up all four sides and then I subtracted 28 from that
total that gives me 57 inches. I added one inch on just to allow for seam allowances which gives me
a length of 58 inches and for the width you're gonna go one inch higher than your foam so my
foam is three inches I'm gonna go with a four inch width. Next up you're gonna cut your zipper panel
so for me that is my 28 inch side is going to be my zipper side I bought a 26 inch zipper just
to allow a little bit of space on each side and then again I added one inch four seams the zipper
panel came out to 29 inches long. To calculate the height of your zipper panel you're going
to do the same thing we did before so whatever width your foam is you're gonna add one inch
my three inch foam I added one inch but then on top of that you also add the width of your zipper
so my zipper was 1.5 inches wide which means that my zipper panel will be 5.5 inches tall.
Now the zipper panel seems a little bit intimidating to make but it actually turns
out really well what you're going to do is fold your fabric in half with the right sides facing
and then you're going to sew along the fold with the seam allowance of half the width of the zipper
so my zipper was one and a half inches my seam allowance will be 0.75 inches and that's how far
in from the fold I will sew my line. Next cut down the center of the seam that you just sewed
and then open it up place the large part of the fabric face down on the table and place the
zipper face down on the open seat. Now I read that you needed a special foot to sew the zipper on.
I did not have a special foot so I just used my regular foot and it worked okay. So if you
don't have a zipper foot you can try without, if you do I'm sure that's probably better
but you want to sew down each side of the zipper and you might have to just stop and
pull the zipper down a little bit once you get to the top so that you can sew around and it doesn't
get in the way. To really secure the zipper you're going to want to sew back and forth on each edge
of the zipper and then flip the panel over and cut open the seam with a seam ripper sew together one
end of the zipper panel with one end of the long thin boxing piece you cut out and then center the
zipper panel on the long edge of either the top or bottom piece. With the right sides facing sew
along the edge of the zipper panel and the bottom panel keeping that half inch seam allowance.
Just before getting to the corner you're going to want to stop put a couple little snips in the edge
of the fabric to help it stretch and then turn your fabric and start going on the other side.
You can do this all the way around until you come back to the zipper panel and then once
you've made it all the way around you're going to want to join the end of the boxing to the other
side of the zipper panel if you have a little bit extra you can always trim it off but you should be
pretty close on fabric here. Now you're going to do the same thing with your other piece of large
fabric so you can start at the zipper panel again and make your way all the way around
making sure to add those little snips in the corners and completely turn your fabric before
beginning each new side. And finally you're going to turn your cushion cover right side out put your
foam with your batting inside zip it up and you're good to go. So I repeated that same process for my
second cushion, that one went a lot quicker and smoother than the first so I hope the same goes
for you and then I moved on to this back piece. So originally David and I had thought about doing
cushions similar to this on the back but we thought when we were driving they'd be
falling all around, there's not a ton of sitting room here to begin with so we wanted something
kind of close to the wall and we settled on this because I really like the look of it
it's solid in place we can remove it. It's still cozy but it's it's not falling around it's just
a little bit cleaner and neater. So the first step here is going to be measuring out how big you want
to cut your plywood so I measured from this bottom corner and it's about 41 on the bottom there
and then make sure to measure from the top of your cushions not the bottom of your cushions
and see how high you want to go up. So I think I told David about 15 inches is how
high I wanted it. We've obviously got a bit of a funky shape here so we cut the box first and
then David just traced this out and was able to cut that out. Next next up I covered the plywood
with about three or four sheets of batting and just wrapped it a couple inches over the back
and then I wrapped that in my material and stapled it all along the back of the plywood
making sure to take extra care around the edges and to kind of make sure that it looked good
from the front where I was stapling it. To make these cute little covered buttons, I took some
of the spray adhesive and just some big buttons that I found at Walmart that I like the size of
I cut a circle of this fabric and then place the button face down on the fabric and with a threaded
needle I just sewed kind of the whole perimeter of the circle of fabric pulled it tight and tied
it off. I decided on three buttons so I obviously measured out to make sure that the three buttons
were equally spaced and that they were equally spaced from the top and bottom of the board
and then I got my staple gun and put one staple horizontal and one vertical so that it was in
a bit of a cross in the spot that I wanted each of my buttons. I then super glued these buttons
into place and I just put my weights on them for half an hour to an hour just to kind of make sure
that something was heavy and holding them down and voila that's pretty much it. So one thing to note
as I mentioned at the beginning is that David and I have this 1x4 here and basically that's just
because of the curve of our van it's not something that you for sure need but it is something that
if your kind of board is added tilt backwards at the bottom you might want to add to secure
it in place we got this handy dandy fastener from amazon as you can see there's a piece on
the top of the board here and then there's a piece on the wall and this just slides in
like that so there you have it guys this actually was a lot easier than I thought it would be to
make. I think in total it was like $189 CAD for all the materials and it's custom it's the color I
want it's the size we want we couldn't be happier with it! So thank you so much for watching,
feel free to reach out with any questions or tell me how your van builds going how
your cushions are going I'd love to hear from you in the comments. Thank you so much
for watching don't forget to like this video if you liked it and share with your friends.
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our adventures right now in Canada and later hopefully around the world. See you next week!