Silk and Down Custom Bench Cushion Creation

We created this bench cushion with 25/75 down/feather fill and covered it in this fabulous silk stripe.
If you ever wonder how a project like this happens, here's the basics:
The customer (in this case the interior decorator) called us to make a custom cushion for this bench that sits in the homeowner's entrance hallway. As you can see, the bench is a beautiful thing...just by itself. But this hallway was rather "cold" looking and needed softgoods to give it some warmth. I started by going to the customer's home with a large sheet of butcher paper and traced a pattern that fit the contours of the piece. I also brought with me a couple of pillow forms in different sizes. While I was there, the decorator and I played with the pillow forms to see which ones were suitable to the porportions of the furniture. At the same time, we made the decision as to how thick the bottom cushion was to be. We call this the "boxing height" as this is a boxed cushion style. We also do knife edge cushions for similar chairs and benches (which is just the top & bottom pieces sewn together at the edges) but in this case we added the boxing that we made about 4" or so. When the pattern piece/sketch got back to our shop, Lori altered it to create a "crest" ....this is what makes it "pouf" up on the top and bottom and takes out the flat, boxy look. This crested cushion look doesn't happen because of the type of fill on the inside alone. The pattern pieces are cut to create that luxurious plump appearance.
We immediately got busy sewing the cushion & pillow covers while sending the pattern to our custom down supplier. There they created the cushion "insides" following our pattern & instructions. By the time this down form arrived at our shop, we had all the covers completed! We zippered-on the beautiful silk cover, loaded it in the car with the completed pillows and popped them in place in the entrance to this wonderful home. The whole process took 2-3 weeks!