A Poor Mans' Ventisit Cushion ... ?

Having, like so many others, shuddered at the relative cost of commercial Ventisit seat cushions, I was intrigued by a recent find in the Wally World bath accessory department … A Chinese import cellular bath mat with the AIRIA brand name. The basic structure appears to be a knock off of the German AS.10/Ventisit material, with the difference that it is only 1/2” thick compared to the 3/4” of the original. In our local store, only white-coloured units were available, but the Walmart online catalogue shows them in a pale blue, A further difference from the original lies in the addition of an arrangement of plastic suction cups bonded to the lower surface – for obvious reasons !




Upper/Seating Surface

Below are pics of the lower surface of the mat showing both before and after the slicing off of the main suction cup body … I used a very sharp, thin X-Acto-style knife for this operation … (and have the cuts in my knuckles to prove it !)




Suction Cups before cutting



Mat after cutting off suction cups



Suction Cup remnants



The pair of mats with suction cups removed and ready for cutting and joining

As the mats, in original form are about 37” long, and my seat is only 31”, some method of shaping it to a finished size now has to be chosen. Having reviewed the problems involved in cutting both mats to size, and sewing them together , (the core material is very, very difficult to penetrate with a hand sewing needle … it grips like contact cement !) - I finally settled on folding the end of one mat to the correct length and then shortening the second unit to fill the “half-space” of the lower surface.




The junction of the shortened lower mat with the folded end of the upper mat

The outer edges of both mates are already pre-finished with a rolled bead … careful placing of the needle/stitches along these edges can minimise problems with the core material gripping the needle. Again, to minimise this problem when tacking down the junction of the “cut edge” with the upper end fold, I used a series of simple “through-both-mats” lock stitches … seems to work OK.

For actual sewing I used a long, but fine, darning needle with regular carpet thread … thicker upholstery and sailmakers’ needles would not penetrate the plastic foam core. I had also tried using nylon fishing line of various strengths, but, being slick, it was hard to maintain stitch tension.

The final step was to add a series of “stick-on” Velcro patches to both the seat material, (the fuzzy side), and the “hook side” to the lower surface of the completed cushion. Ride testing showed the comfort to be satisfactory … as did the static testing by my capable assistant Mittens …



Velcro Patch arrangement

(Continued in Poor Mans Cushion Part 2) ...

 

Apparently my article and pics were too much for the forum software to handle in one chunk sooooo ....



"Mittens"-Tested and Approved



The Installed Cushion

ENJOY ! ....... Fuzzy

 

WOW! What a great pictorial. It looks so easy I may even want to try this!

 

I may give it a try too! Looks pretty simple and much cheaper than the Ventisit!

 

Excellent job!!

 

My wandering mind keeps going back to the prep pix that looks like you did a circumcision on an octopus...

 

A quick follow-up report ... the stick-on Velcro patches used in the original version did NOT work out too well. All needed manual holding down when removing the cushion from the seat fabric to stop them peeling off. Right now, I have several test patches glued to a residual piece of the bathmat material to test for a more permanent solution. Adhesives being used are E6000 and Aleenes Super Fabric.

Fuzzy