When I tried to think of an upholstery project for my own home I realised that I’ve pretty much run out of space for anything new and so I’ve had to move to my mum’s house for this project using Clarke & Clarke upholstery fabric (lucky mum!). My mum still lives in our family home but it’s a four storey town house in London so they’ve chopped it in half and have the bottom two floors now. There is a large open plan sitting room/dining room/kitchen on the first floor with access to a terrace and steps down to the garden at one end and a big bay window onto the street at the other end. When they recently renovated the house they built in a window seat here for storage and for extra seating for guests. However, they never quite got round to finishing it off with seat cushions so this is where I step in.

I asked my mum what colours she wanted the cushions to be, bearing in mind that the window has a large, very colourful stained glass panel attached to it (this came from Orme’s wine bar that my parents used to own in Clapham and our amazingly talented friend, Jo, made it for them). My mum picked out the painting below, that sits to the left of the window, as the inspiration for the cushion colours to tie the window and this side of the room together.

Use a piece of art as the basis of colour choices in a room. Oh, and meet beautiful Phoebe who is Otto’s best friend.

So we picked out three different fabrics for the window seat: a textured petrol blue for the seat itself (Tornado Surf), a chalk pink for the back of the scatter cushions (Tornado Chalk Pink) and a blush pink for the front of the cushions that blends well with the stained glass (Squall Blush). All of the fabrics are from Clarke & Clarke’s SS15 Monsoon collection.

The colours work perfectly with the stained glass window as well as the painting, which is on the left above the sofa. Anything darker would have absorbed too much light from the window.

My mum decided to leave both ends of the window seat free of cushions for drinks/vase/lamp etc.

The stained glass is from Orme’s wine bar that my parents used to own and run in the seventies and eighties.

The texture of the fabric is perfect for a window seat as the cushions don’t slip around and it disguises any dirt.

What I used:

Foam cushions from eFoam – You just have to measure the dimensions of your seat and they will cut it to size. For a window seat I would recommend adding the dacron wrap with stockinette option otherwise the foam will disintegrate before long and the fabric you cover it with won’t sit smoothly on bare foam.

Tornado Surf fabric – seat cushions

Tornado Chalk Pink fabric and Squall Blush fabric – scatter cushions

Scatter cushion inner pads – John Lewis

I used a basic bench seat cushion tutorial from the Liberty Book of Sewing to make the covers, which is relatively simple but you must spend a good deal of time cutting the pieces to the perfect size and pinning them together very carefully to ensure that they fit well (the tighter the fit the better as they will loosen up over time).

I just need my own bay window now as I’m a bit jealous! If I were do my own, I think I’d choose a lovely grey wool fabric and pale pink cushions (I’m off in dream land now).

Katy x