Part of my weekend was spent sewing

I spent a fair amount of my weekend sewing a 72" bench pad for my daughter, Kate.  She picked out the fabric, I picked up the rest of everything we needed to complete the project.  Here's my process:

Have you ever priced foam rubber?  It is darn expensive!  At JoAnn's Fabrics, it was going to cost $96.00 for 2 yards of 27" wide.  I think that's exorbitant.  I checked out SAS fabric store - it has so much stuff and you just never know what they will have, but guess what?  They did - and for a much better price - $24!  It was 96" x 27" wide.  So now I have the dilemma of cutting it.

The picture above shows the cut edge.  I think it looks pretty good.

How did I do it?  Well, I got on Youtube and found a tutorial by Sailrite.  They said to use a kitchen electric knife and it worked so well.  And I mean really well.

Here's the fabric Kate picked out.  I also bought the trim at SAS for a much better price - about a third of what it would cost elsewhere.

After cutting two pieces for the top and bottom, I made my corner template and trimmed the corners.

Sailrite said to tape down the trim by using double sided basting tape.  That helped quite a bit when it came time to sew.

It really made things stay in place.  You use your zipper foot on your sewing machine so you can get close to the trim.  The corners were a bit tricky, though, even though they  made it look easy.  Hmmm.  I wouldn't say it was easy.  Not hard, but not easy.

This is the Sailrite film I used.  You gently wrap the film around the piece of foam rubber, folding up the bottom edge.  You then use a vacuum cleaner and suck out the air.  It shrinks way down and it makes it easier to put the foam into the bench pad.  It is such a soft, thin film and you can't even feel it inside the pad.  It is noiseless.  No crinkling of plastic.   

Finishing the open end was very challenging for me, but I got it done.

There's Sophie - thinking she is my helper and having to be in the center of it.  Now I am just waiting for Kate to send me a picture of the pad on her bench, which I will definitely share with you.  I thought it turned out very cute!