A letter from a reader

I am 68 and the first cushions I have ever written a letter about were sitting on an upholsterer’s own sofa.

Six things these two cushion covers get right that fifty years of shop cushions never did, from a woman who spotted them in the back of a workshop full of other people’s chairs.

Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read

I had better say who is talking first. I am Pat, I am 68, and I live in Leeds with my husband Brian and his spaniel Wilf. I have bought cushions for our front room for fifty years, more of them than I would admit to Brian, and I have never once thought one was worth writing to anybody about. Well. I have changed my mind, and it took a woman who re-covers furniture for a living to change it.

The cushions I am writing about are from the cushion cover collection at Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly finding women like me the things we did not know we were allowed to have for a few years now. They are printed covers, the front a vintage patchwork print, and there are a good few designs. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.

I first saw them at the upholsterer’s. This September I finally took Brian’s mother’s fireside chair to be re-covered, after twenty years of saying I would, to a little workshop behind the shops in Chapel Allerton. Glenys runs it on her own. The front is rolls of fabric and half-stripped chairs, and in the back there is one battered old sofa where she has her tea, and on it were two cushions. One was squares of sunflowers and poppies and lupins, all autumn colours. The other was a row of pine trees on cream. I said she must have made them herself. She laughed and said no, they are printed, she could not make me one for that money, and she would know. Then she told me where they were from. A woman who spends all day judging other people’s fabric had picked them for her own sofa. That was enough for me. Read on.

The flower one, in my own armchair by the window. Brian says it looks like it has been there for years. That is the idea.

Here is what fifty years of buying cushions taught me. They come in two piles. The plain ones, oatmeal or grey, that go with everything and say nothing. And the busy ones, a big print or a slogan, that look smart in the shop and wrong the minute you get them home.

A cushion was either so plain nobody noticed it or so loud I stopped noticing anything else. I had given up expecting one that looked like it belonged in an ordinary Yorkshire front room.

These are the first I have owned that do. I have lived with two of them through a wet October now, and it comes down to six things.

The morning they came, laid out on the bed. Covers only, flat as you like. My old cushions went straight inside.

1

The print looks like it came from my grandmother’s front room

The flower one is called the Bloompatch, and it is twelve squares, four across and three down, inside a mustard-gold border with a dark green piped edge. Sunflowers, red poppies, purple lupins, blue cornflowers and red berries, each on its own colour, gold and cream and deep green and burgundy and denim blue. It is printed, I will be straight with you about that, and Glenys was straight with me. But from my armchair, from the doorway, from anywhere a person would actually stand, it reads as a proper vintage patchwork print, the kind you would find on the good chair at your aunt’s. Printed squares, not stitched ones, and nobody who has sat in that chair has minded one bit.

The corner I see from my side of the fire. The big sunflower, the berries, the gold border.

★★★★★

My sister thought the flower one had come out of our mother’s old front room. I had to show her the parcel before she believed me.

Margaret H., Sedbergh

2

The pine trees see you from October to January

The second one is the Pinehaven. A row of six pine trees in different greens across a cream background, a sweeping brown and sage hill coming up from one corner, a pale piped edge. No snowmen, no baubles, no writing. That is what sold it to me. It went on the sofa the first cold Sunday in October and it will still look right on New Year’s Day, without me having to dig out a Christmas box or take anything down in January. Wintry, not Christmassy, if you follow me.

Four o’clock, lamp on, kettle on. The pine one in the corner of the settee.

★★★★★

I wanted something for the winter that was not covered in reindeer. The trees are just right and they will stay out well past Christmas.

Jean P., Kirkby Lonsdale

3

The two of them sit together

I did not set out to buy two. But the greens in the flower squares pick up the greens in the trees, and the cream in the pine one picks up the cream squares in the other, and side by side on the settee they look like they came from the same house. They do not match, and I am glad they do not. Matching cushions make a room look like a show home. These look like somebody has been choosing things for that room for a long time.

The pair of them on the settee. Wilf has been told they are not his.

★★★★★

Bought one, went back for a second design a week later because the first one looked lonely. They sit beautifully together.

Susan W., Bentham

5

Three sizes, each matched to the cushion inside

This is the bit I wish every shop did. Each design comes in three sizes, measured flat from seam to seam, and the boutique tells you which cushion each one fits. The 41 × 41 cm fits a 40 × 40 cm cushion, the right size for an armchair or a bedroom chair. The 46 × 46 cm fits a 45 × 45 cm cushion, which is the usual sofa size and what they suggest if you are not sure. The 56 × 56 cm fits a 55 × 55 cm cushion, for a big sofa or a bed. I measured my old pads with Brian’s tape before I ordered, and they went in first time.

The pine one has been upstairs as well. First frost of the year on the window that morning.

★★★★★

The size guide was exactly right. Measured my cushions, picked the middle size, and they fit like they were made for them.

Christine A., Whalley

These covers, against the cushions you have been making do with

You can carry on with a plain cushion nobody notices or a loud one that never looked right, like I did for fifty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

The 41 × 41 cm is £24.95, down from £50.00. The 46 × 46 cm is £27.95, down from £56.00, and the 56 × 56 cm is £29.95, down from £60.00. Every design in the collection is the same price, size for size.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these are in their sale while the first autumn stock goes, and once a design sells through in a size, that one is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid more than £50.00 for one cushion in a department store that looked tired by the spring, so £24.95 for a cover I actually look forward to sitting next to made it an easy yes. Twice.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If your front room has looked the same since the last time you decorated, and you are not about to decorate again, this is where I would start. Have a look at the designs before somebody else takes your favourite, because the first autumn stock will not wait. And if you ever see a patchwork of sunflowers on a battered sofa in the back of an upholsterer’s in Leeds, you will know where I got the idea.

Pat

THE CUSHION COVER COLLECTION

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

From £50.00 £24.95

• Twenty-five printed designs, vintage patchwork look
• Bloompatch florals and Pinehaven pine trees
• Cover only, cushion pad not included
• 41 × 41 cm £24.95 · 46 × 46 cm £27.95 · 56 × 56 cm £29.95
• Each size matched to the cushion pad inside
• Free UK delivery

See The Cushion Cover Collection

Sale on now. The first autumn stock is already going.