Popup first update - Cushions!

My friends took great care of their camper, but I just can’t help myself and must personalize everything in some way. I need to add the Lisa-official-stamp-of-awesomeness, so upgrading the popup here we come!

As a frame of reference, we have a 2000 Coleman Taos popup which un-upgraded looked like this new:

I didn’t start from scratch, my friends updated the flooring already and painted all the cabinets a neutral color.

For my first project, I decided to try to do something simple, updating the cushions. We had the lovely dark green and red striped pattern, but I thought our popup was going in a different direction.

Aren’t they just the height of fashion? At first, we were going to do a straight pirate theme, way over the top I am sure with a Blackbeard flag and everything, but at the fabric store as I stood there in the cutting line at Joann's with jolly roger and red striped fabric, and the hubby said, “What about a beach theme?” Talk about a 180, so I dropped the bolts and started my design all over.

We found some pretty cool beachy fabrics. I made sure to buy outdoor fabric, that way it is wipe-off-able and does not stain. The little one is 8 years old, but man she is like a tiny mess tornado. I hear she comes by it honestly.

We settled on 3 types of fabric, top cushions, bottoms cushions, and valance material. We decided to stay with the sage colored original blackout curtains because they were still in good repair and were light enough to go with a beach theme.

The lighter colors are for the cushions and the blue underwater one is for the valance. I would have just chosen one for the cushions, but they didn’t have enough fabric for all 4 in either style so I figured, why not?

I am no master seamstress, but I have a machine and I know how to thread it (which is a huge production), so the majority of my sewing skills include machine sewn squares and rectangles, so this should be fine! These cushions were right in my wheel house!

First off, measure, measure, and then measure again to be sure. There are way more scientific ways to do this than I did (measure the front, times it by two, add it to the measurement of the sides timed by two, then make sure you have a ton extra just in case), so let’s all take a moment and thank the professionals on Pinterest who make projects like this possible for me. All hail ProPinteresters!

I flipped the fabric nice side up, threw a cushion on it, and pinned the crap out of it (and my fingers) until the fabric was snug around cushion.

Lesson learned (let me do the wrong things for you, learn from my mistakes): Don’t pull too tight! Not only will it rub your fingers raw from the outdoor fabric, but you will need a buddy to help your force yank it around the cushion.

Once the pinning was done, I slid the cushion out carefully and sewed around all but one of the short sides. Cool tip – sew the corner like below so the corner looks rounded.

Ok, then I flipped that bad-boy inside-out (or right-side-out) and stuffed that cushion back in there making sure to line up the sew lines with the zipper and original sewing lines to match.

Now, here came the hard part. I do not have the skills to sew with the machine the final edge, so I had to hand sew. I stabbed myself multiple times, rubbed my finger pads raw, but I was able to make it happen.

Lesson learned: Use heavy-duty thread, a needle that can make a larger hole so it will go throuigh the strong fabric, and pull as tight as you can to sew and continue to overlap your sew lines as much as you can to reinforce the stitching.

Ok, almost there! My cushions have two knobby things on the larger cushions to hold them in place. I used an awl to poke the hole and a drill to put the knobby pieces back in place.

Tada! Now you just need to do that three more times without stabbing yourself with the awl as a punishment for setting out to do this in the first place. Check out the final look, I am pretty proud of myself!