Crafting Luxury Cushions

Crafting Luxury Cushions

How Our Cushions Are Made

Every step of the crafting process is completed with love and attention to detail, right here in the Surface House studio, we thought you might enjoy some construction shots and an insight to what goes into the creation of our cushions. 

Design

Our prints start as design for wallpaper, 52cm wide and with varying lengths of repeat, so for our soft furnishings, the prints are usually reworked slightly to suit the scale and shape of a cushion. 

The Birds & Flowers print for example, had to be completely redesigned to suit a square cushion, otherwise the little birds would have not fitted into the print area.

Our Birds & Flowers print adapted into square sections, you can see the straight cushion edges.

A nice neat square is cut out, along with an equal sized square of the wonderful Clarke & Clarke - Highlander fabric that we love to use. This is used for the backing of the cushion, it is soft and luxurious, so it really adds another layer of quality to the product. 

New staple thread collection, simple, beautiful colours. 

Piping

The next step is to make the piping using a coordinating fabric, we use a 4mm washable cord which creates a fairly stiff, decorative border for the cushion, we love the 4mm piping because it is wide enough to balance well with the large cushion, but not too thick that it draws focus away from the print. 

Making the piping is definitely the easiest part of the whole process! The coordinating fabric is cut into long strips at 4cm wide, the insertion of the cord and sewing it into a usable piping strip is all carefully completed in one step at the sewing machine. 

The piping is then sewn neatly to the cushion front, all the way around the perimeter. The slits you can see in the piping strip below are there to create a natural curve on the corners. 

Joining

When the whole border of the cushion is piped, the two ends of piping have to meet and be sewn carefully to make the join as discreet as possible. 

The two outer sides of the piping fabric are sewn face together, ensuring that when pressed flat, the join will sit neatly against the cushion face and not be slack or pulling too tightly. 

The two ends of white cord are sliced diagonally and butted together to become one continuous piece. Below, on the left is what it looks like from the side before everything it sewn into place and on the right, it is sewn down. The aim is for the join to be as discreet as possible and to get it in the same place on all of the cushions. 

Label

Our little Surface House label is cut out, pressed and sewn into the seam, ensuring it is level and visible from behind the piping. 

Zip

Piping and label done, next step is inserting the invisible zip, which is very lightly ironed on the lowest heat setting to open it out flat. This enables a closer stitch to the zipper teeth. 

The zip is attached with the zipper facing the print, this means that when the cushion is complete and turned right side out, the zipper pull will face outwards.

A running stitch secures the zip loosely in place ready for stitching tightly and closely to the teeth. The closer you can sew the more invisible the zip will be - without getting too close and hitting the teeth or causing the zip to get stuck on the fabric of course!

Here is the running stitch in place and the second process of very neatly and firmly attaching the zip, close to the teeth.

At this point the zipper is checked to make sure it is free of fibres and that it glides across easily, then the other half of the zip is sewn onto the backing fabric using the same process. 

Invisible

Again, the zip is checked to make sure it slides freely and that when the zip is closed, the zipper teeth become invisible (below).

Sew Together

Next step is to sew the two sides of the cushion together, face to face. We use the existing stitch line (from attaching the piping) as a guideline and try to sew to the left of it, giving a clean, tight finish along the edges. With no stitches or seam showing through when the cushion is turned right side out.

Sewing the two sides together at the start and end of the zip is the trickiest part, extra care is taken to ensure the zip sits neatly along the seam. 

The stitches at the two ends of the zip must be sewn and secured with enough strength to endure the zipper being pulled both ways and the cushion opening being pulled wide open to insert the large cushion pad.

Final Checks

Once the whole perimeter is sewn, the cushion slip is turned right side out.. first glimpse! This is to check that on all of the edges and especially the corners, there are no stitches from the piping showing through.

Quite often the cushion has to be turned back inside out and another line of stitching is sewn, closer to the piping cord in areas. It is better to not sew close enough and to rectify later, than to sew too close and straight through the piping! This process of turning inside out, sewing, back right out and checking is repeated until every edge is neat and equal.

Extra Support

The next step is a little extra luxury we like to give our cushions, two strips of fabric are folded and pressed to create two 'finishing strips' for the zip edges, to give a more luxurious finish and gives more rigidity.

Finishing Touches

New clean cotton is cut into strips of about 10cm wide, it is then folded and pressed in half along the whole length. The two unfinished edges are then tucked inside and pressed to create a folded strip that can be placed along both sides of the zip edges. This is sewn neatly and carefully, to get close enough to cover the visible stitches but avoiding getting too close to the teeth and causing to zip to stick.

This finishing border hides all of sewing work and gives the zip extra support to avoid pulling the fabric. It also looks much more beautiful to inside the cushion to see a neatly finished edge.

We do not add the white cotton strip as above to every edge inside the cushion, it would cause a bulge in the corners especially, and not allow the cushion to sit naturally. Instead, the three remaining sides inside the cushion are trimmed neatly with pinking shears to avoid fraying fabric.

The cushion is cleared of loose threads and fibres, turned right side out, gently pressed and filled with a heavy and high quality duck feather pad.

The pads are slightly larger than the cushion itself to make the finished product extra filled and firm. The feathers fluff up very well when shaken, giving the cushion a lasting newness. 

Here it is! A finished Birds & Flowers luxury handmade cushion. Shop the cushion collection here. All of our fabric is printed in small batches in the UK, we can therefore create a bespoke variation of a design or colour to match your specific needs, please get in touch to discuss your ideas and we will let you know how we can help you. 

We hope you enjoyed this insight into the making of our cushions. We can assure you that each one is made with care and a passion for detail. 

Each item is delightfully gift wrapped before being securely packaged and delivered to you. 

We offer free UK shipping on all of our products.

The cushions make excellent accent accessories for your home, bringing personality and an injection of colour along with a design story into the interior.

They also make perfect and unusual gifts for a home lover..

Thank you for reading!

Surface House

Print Design Feature: Birds & Flowers

The Birds & Flowers Print
Our Most Sought After Print, Featuring All Original Hand Drawn Artwork, Crafted Together Into A Whimsical And Slightly Abstract World...

The Making Of

The Birds and Flowers print design concept was to create a wonderful, whimsical world of bright colours and interweaving florals. Inspired by William Morris, but with no symmetry. To create a contemporary design for wallpaper application and eventually product surfaces.


I was a little apprehensive about starting the the drawings for the wallpaper design, after spending time at university drawing and designing conceptually without thinking too much about the commercial viability of what I was doing.


Starting the ball rolling with my own new designs, knowing I was going to have to create a marketable product at the end was more difficult than I had imagined. It wasn't the difficulty of the drawing, it was knowing that every moment I spent drawing ought to be something that was useful for a future design, otherwise I would feel like I was wasting time.

The blue tropical, is the most popular bird, he features boldly coloured in the City Tale variation, but is toned down slightly for the Precious Mineral and Pearl variations.


After much deliberation over what and how to start creating imagery, I decided to just do what felt right. I started by drawing the birds collection.. This was a shock to myself and everyone else, my design handwriting had always been industrial and geometric. Yet there I was creating tropical birds! I decided to go with it and see where it led.
Drawing

I used my favourite Unipin fine liner pens and began drawing.

I had to force myself to stop drawing birds eventually. I was having so much fun exploring colour and creating texture effects. I will certainly be considering creating a 'tropical birds' wallpaper in the future, having seen how popular this design concept was. Then I can really go wild with the colour, shape and style of the birds.

Little yellow breasted bird, this tiny guy is almost missed when you glance quickly at the design, he is a little pop of colour in the top corner and is a great contrast to the large blue bird and deep coloured background.

Paper

The birds were all drawn separately on A3 super smooth paper, so they could be digitally scanned very easily. I am considering making a series of limited edition art prints from these original drawings. Look out for those coming soon!

Digital Finish

The drawings were added to the wallpaper design digitally, after being scanned they were touched up in Photoshop, cut out and manipulated to sit in realistic places within the wallpaper design.

Having spent so many hours drawing the birds I wanted to avoid too much heavy digital editing. I played around with colours and scale etc but decided to leave them as similar to how they were drawn as possible.

Photoshop is of course great for cutting the image out to place in the design and for touching up any hand smudges or flecks of dust that might of landed on the drawing.

I created the final design with the birds in place, the repeat done and colour variations complete. I then had the marvellous idea of testing out a few effects on the drawings, digitally, just to see what happened. Most filters created a hideous mess of what I had just created.. and then I found the Oil Paint filter. I was reluctant to use it as I felt it was taking something away from my drawings. If used to heavily, the design becomes a weird manufactured looking blur, but I sampled the print using only the tiniest percentage of the filter and the results were excellent.

The result of the Photoshop edit was achieving smoother lines, the harsh sometimes rough edges of the hand drawing were lightly smoothed and everything seemed to gel together more. It was as if the individual elements were nestled into the surface of the print, and were not just sitting on top. I saved the two files - before and after and spent a long time deciding which one would be the finished design. I was worried that people would not understand what I had done to create this design and that the hand drawn aspect would be tarnished.

Click to open a larger version of the 'before' design.. compare to the second 'after' image. See the slight difference in the line quality.

I hope you will agree that when you look closely at the 'before' and 'after' the Photoshop filter, the results are very subtle.


As a print lover, I made the decision ultimately to do what worked best for the design. Yes the raw hand drawn imagery was great and completely natural, but if I wanted this wallpaper to be the very best it could, I had to make the right decision and use the Photoshop edit to complete the design.
Test Print And Launch

The final step in production was to get a wallpaper test print done, to check for precision detail, quality, colour and style. We LOVED the result and launched the wallpaper within a few days.

The wallpaper is now available in three variations, City Tale, Precious Mineral and Pearl.

Which One Is Your Favourite?

The Birds wallpaper collection is available now, as a luxury made to order wallpaper and the City Tale version has been restyled and launched as a cushion design.

Birds & Flowers Handmade Cushion

Handmade cushion, a bright a bold accessory for your interior, full of life and energy.

I hope you enjoyed the Birds creation story, why not check out one of the other posts about how I create designs for surface print, or perhaps one about inside the business of Surface House.


Thanks for reading, please leave your thoughts below!

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Surface House

Surface House: Leave your thoughts and comments and I will get back to you!
Laura Hart, founder of Surface House.

Showcase Your Uniqueness...

Adorn your interiors with delightful wallpaper from Surface House.

Each design has a distinguished personality. Meticulously created and produced to the highest standards. Featuring dramatic hand drawn artwork, carefully tailored into intricately constructed designs. 

Wallpaper Creation..

Birds & Flowers - City Tale

All imagery is hand drawn, created with uni pin fine line pens. Very time consuming, but so worth it to achieve intricate defined detail and wispy lines. 
The background of natural formations were developed using an experimental technique using +Winsor & Newton inks.
Next step, scanning and digital manipulation. Trying to envisage the design layout and repeat. Lots and lots of Photoshop editing, layout changing, colour refining and edge defining later and we have an initial design product.

The work is then dissected and evaluated, tweaked and finalised. This process happens a number of times until we are happy that the wallcovering is exquisite! 
Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments box below, we would love to hear what you are thinking! Follow us on Twitter @surface_house for updates!
                                                                                                                                                                       

Surface House create exquisite wallcoverings full of individuality and conscience. 

Laura, the founder, is obsessed with hidden beauty, unique placement and coincidence. 

“Design should be more than a space filler, the way in which colour interacts with its surroundings is an evocative and beautiful thing. Especially when the print can be a material space for the mind to wander.”

Forestry - Gold Leaf

Forestry started with a tube of acrylic paint, and a gorgeous brush. After much painting and imagery recording later. The work was finely crafted into a luxuriously layered print. 

The concept was to create a design that your eyes can wander into and explore for a while.  

Let us know your thoughts on if you think we achieved this in the comments box below! We would love to hear your thoughts.

Test Prints

When a design is finalised it is time to order the test prints! An exciting time and an anxious wait for them to be produced and delivered! 

We source our printing from a UK print company, based in Lancashire. They produce outstanding quality print detail. See some close up photography of our prints below..

It would mean so much to us to hear what your first impression is of Surface House. Please comment below, we will respond to all posts.

Surface House is an independent print studio, here to give you something truly special. To view the full launch collection, visit www.surfacehouse.com.

To discuss a bespoke design concept or if you have any questions or comments, please contact office@surfacehouse.