After painting the deck, spraying our furniture a cool gray and building a table top all in the spirit of giving out tired looking deck a bit of a pick me up it became even more apparent that the old cushions had seen better days and were looking worse and worse the more changes we made.

Lucky for us I had be loathing them for some time. Although, loathing might be a strong word…let’s put it this way I was in a state of serious dislike while plotting their demise. I tried to source some premade pillows that would be bright and colorful while not breaking the bank. I failed miserably. Then I toyed with the idea of buy new outdoor foam and making my own, which turned out to be an almost equally expensive proposition until I wisely decided to recycle the old stuffing and sew up some new covers instead.

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I’ve been loving Trina Turk’s Indoor Outdoor collection for Schumacher for some time now but not willing to spend $100 yd on fabric for our outdoor cushions I needed to find something that gave the same vibe on a budget .  I found a a couple suitable substitutes.

On the left in Coral Splendor from Lewis and Sharon Textiles and P. Kaufmann Zebra Skin from House of Fabrics. I also ordered a Neutral Sunbrella outdoor fabric remnant I found online for the majority of the cushions.

A few weekends ago I whipped out the old sewing machine and got to work sewing up 4 box cushions for the seats and 4 pillows for the seat backs. I cut apart the old pillows and reused the stuffing for the box cushions to save on cost and bought 4 new 24 inch outdoor pillow inserts for the back. Buying the inserts pre-made actually turned out cheaper than buying foam and batting separately to stuff them.

The seat back pillows are reversible so if you are feeling like you want a dose of coral it’s an easy flip of the pillow.

Each of the cushions pillows are piped with the coordinating zebra fabric to to help tie everything together.

So far we’re loving them.

They already gotten a lot of use since I put the finishing touches on them a few weeks ago/ So far we’ve had three BBQ’s and even an incident with some BBQ sauce spill they was left sitting on the cushions over night. Fortunately it came out with a little Dawn and a scrubby brush and it looked good as new. I can’t wait to add some plants and greenery to the space.