Card Suits Novelty Cushions

We love playing cards! Every year my sister-in-law holds an annual euchre tournament or two and also has a couples tournament with 3 games – darts, euchre and Yahtzee. Sadly, we haven’t been able to get together with friends to play cards for a while. Nevertheless, I decided to do a card suits theme for some gifts for her this year.

First up, I found this perfect fabric from Funkymonkey for the project. It is just great start to the project theme. I made her a mask and a small wallet from this patterned fabric.

The Card Suit Cushions

Next up was to try my hand at making a set of 4 cushions in the shape of the card suits.

Card Suits – Clubs

So I tried first to make the club since I figured that would be the most difficult. I found the basic shape in Cricut Design Space (online software for Cricut machines). The largest I could make is 11.5″ x 11.5″ though so I tried to make a pattern myself instead.

Using my word processing software, I printed a large shape across several pages (this was handled by selecting the POSTER option in the Mac printing dialogue). I taped the pages together, but it was too big really and I didn’t have enough stuffing for four cushions that size. I ended up going back to Cricut Design Space and using the smaller version after all. Anyway, I discovered that the bottom or “stem” of the standard club shape is much too narrow to allow stuffing or even turning. Since the base of the spade shape was great for turning and stuffing the cushion, I put the spade bottom onto the club bottom and it worked well. I stuffed the fleece version with poly batting and moved to the next.

Card Suits – Spades

So I cut out all the shapes in a basic fleece fabric that I had on hand. It was a ugly yellow so not much use for anything really. I cut each of the shapes twice and sewed right sides together and then turned right side out through a hole I left. For the Spade and Club, that was through on the bottom. I love how the shape of the spade cushion turned out.

Hearts & Diamonds

For the Heart and Diamond, I left the opening on the sides.

They looked good if a little dull and drab in the yellow fleece. They needed to be jazzed up a bit. And that is where the minky came in.

I got the minky fabric from Funky Monkey. I hate working with minky but love the results. Once minky is sewn up, it is luxurious and beautiful. But I get fur everywhere! I’ll still be cleaning up for weeks. Further, since I continued to cut the shapes with my cricut machine, I may have ruined two cutting mats.

I made the cushion covers and pulled them over the fleece shapes. I also added double sided velcro to close up the opening. This way the covers can be removed for cleaning.

Overall, these are really just novelty size at about 11 inches across for each. Grouped together they make a cute little decoration. I’m thinking I might add ribbon to the tops so they can be suspended from the ceiling if she wants that. Time to wrap them up!