Made to measure cushions for Scottish tenements, cottages and bothies

174 wet days and 34 hours of December sun

Scotland asks one thing of a cushion: stay warm while the weather doesn't. The Met Office's 1991 to 2020 averages for Paisley, just west of Glasgow, give 49.7 in (1,263 mm) of rain on 174 days, 33 air frosts and 1,280 hours of sun a year. December manages about 34 of those hours.

Go north and west and it gets wetter. Most of the western half of northern Scotland sees at least 67 in (1,700 mm) a year, and the wettest ground northwest of Fort William tops 157 in (4,000 mm). By the Moray Firth, in the lee of the mountains, it's nearer 28 in (700 mm). The western and northern coasts are the windiest in the UK, and up north the frost-free season can be as short as three months.

That's weather for wool coats and covers that come off. Made to measure cushions in Scotland should be warm to the hand and easy to wash, because the damp will find them. The rest of the country is on our United Kingdom page, and the bay windows of the south are on England.

Tenements, the bed recess and walls deep enough to sit in

Glasgow's tenements went up in red or blond sandstone through the 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly three to five stories, no taller than the street was wide. In Edinburgh's World Heritage Site, homes are almost all tenements. People prize the flats now for their large rooms, high ceilings and period features.

Their windows make good seats. Measure the window board itself, not the floor, and be exact about depth. A window seat cushion there wants a zip-off cover and a lift now and then, because condensation forms first on cold frames and external walls.

Many Glasgow kitchens from the late 1800s had a bed recess, an alcove sized for a double bed and hidden behind a curtain. Later renovations often folded the alcove into the room. If yours survived, it makes a fine reading nook: a firm floor cushion, a backrest and two bolsters, as the reading nook guide lays out.

Out in the country the walls get thicker. The old blackhouses of the Hebrides and Highlands had double drystone walls packed with earth, and a stone cottage gives you window recesses deep enough to sit in. Cut a sill cushion a little smaller than the sill: one parent in the UK measured sills of 43 1/4 x 15 3/4 in (110 x 40 cm) and planned cushions of about 41 1/4 x 13 3/4 in (105 x 35 cm).

A word on bothies. The Mountain Bothies Association keeps about 100 open shelters where you should expect only four walls, a roof and somewhere dry to sleep. Carry your sit mat in and out. A converted farm bothy or a Highland lodge is another matter; a sleeping platform or a bench by the stove takes a firm pad gladly. What's the deepest window in your house, and does anybody sit in it yet?

Wool, tweed-look and corduroy, honestly named

Real Harris Tweed is a legal thing. The Harris Tweed Act 1993 defines it as cloth handwoven by islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, from pure virgin wool dyed and spun there, and the Harris Tweed Authority stamps it with the Orb. The workshop doesn't cut it, and I won't dress a mill weave up as the real article.

What it does have is warm-looking cloth that washes. There's a charcoal mixed weave of black and gray yarns with a salt-and-pepper face; that's your tweed-look. When a buyer asked for plaid, the workshop sent a chart of plaid and tartan fabrics in brown, green, blue and red. Corduroy comes in thicker and lower-pile weights, and velvet catches firelight like nothing else. Velvet remembers the hand that brushed it, so brush it with the pile.

Then throw your own wool blanket over the back of the seat. That's where the real wool can live, my friend.