Interior Cushion Re-upholstery

How beautiful !!!

Some threads just seem to justify a occasional bump!

At the moment, I'm in the middle of replacing the piping on my cushions after eight years.

Fabric washed and air dried, new vinyl piping from Sailrite, using my upgraded LZ1 after the other machines lost in fire.

Requires seam-ripping out old piping, then installing new. Actually, it's a bear, and I doubt any upholsterer would recommend it. They would say, "why not just make all new cushions? You're doing half the work already."

Ah, but that makes too much sense. And I wouldn't have learned this nifty trick (using silk, not garbage bag):

Ok Loren, here you go…
New v-berth cushions for our 31 Independence. Foam from Sailrite; 2 inches firm, topped with 3 inches medium. Very comfortable. Fabric from local mom and daughter store. Assembly by yours truly with a Sailrite clone machine. Foam and fabric around $600. Not perfect, but Amy being delighted with them is good enough.

Here’s what I did for new cushions on my boat.

At the end of last summer I prevailed upon my fiancé (soon to be wife) to help me make some cockpit cushions. She has some serious seamstress skills so my contribution was limited to creating the templates, cutting out the foam as well as the fabric. Sharp eyed observers will notice we messed up on the starboard cushion. We also sort of buggered her general purpose sewing machine so we purchased a Sailrite machine at the boat show last October. My fiancé has made it known in no uncertain terms that she will only be available in a supervisory capacity for future canvas projects. My boat didn’t come with a cushion to cover the drop down table so we used some leftover foam and fabric to create “wedge” cushions, which allowed us to use the current cushions for the cabin berth without needing a big extra cushion. We’ve not yet battle tested this setup so not sure if it will work, particularly on passage, but we’ll test it this summer. Like Christian, I find the overlarge cabin table makes it more difficult to access the banquette. I was considering his method of cutting down the table, but I got an idea from Bob’s excellent video, that maybe making the settee back cushions thinner would make for easier access to the banquette while still keeping the cabin berth. Looking at David’s post it looks like he created 3 separate cushions for his v-berth which is a great idea. My quarter berth, and v- berth cushions are full size cushions which makes it painful to access storage beneath the mattress cushions.

Jim, thanks. We have three storage bins under the v-berth and wanted easier access.

Originally it was two cushions that ran the length of the base, each covering roughly half. Like you said, wrestling them out of the way was a pain. Removing them entirely was the best way to get to the middle or forward storage. And they were slightly longer than the salon settees, so they were still in the way.

With three, cut this way, it’s easy to flip up the one over the bin you need to get to. If the bed is made up, you only have to uncover the cushion that’s over the bin you need to access. Well okay, two cushions if it’s the middle one, but the water tank is there and it’s rare that we need to get to that.