934 Words about Upholstery

I originally planned to finish this project before Brandt’s second birthday. Then I was going to finish by Gwendolyn’s due date. (I did at least get the ottoman done before she was born.) Then I was going to finish before the new school year started. Now it’s October, and at last I have upholstered/slipcovered my chair!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I bought the chair and ottoman for $12 at a garage sale a year ago. Looking past the furry cow print fabric, I liked the lines of the chair and the style of the legs. (If I can indulge in nostalgia, I also liked the style of legs – pudgy baby ankles – on that sweet little boy.)

The chair lived on the porch for a while as I searched for the right fabric to recover it. I estimated that I needed about 7 yards. I wanted something with red in it and with a pattern that had some graphic punch. I also wanted a durable fabric priced such that it wouldn’t turn my $12 chair into a $200 chair. After looking at fabric stores, local furniture outlets, and online, I finally found a red-and-white striped canvas at IKEA. At $5ish per yard (clearanced at the time), the price was right. I bought 8 yards just to be safe.

I started with the ottoman, since its boxy shape made it more straightforward. Because of some structural damage – a collapsed corner, a loose spring, and a split board – I definitely needed to take the old upholstery off to repair the innards (rather than just slipcovering it). I wanted to use the original upholstery as a pattern for my new cover, so I carefully pried all the staples off to remove the fabric without cutting it. This part was tedious, tedious, tedious.

When I finally had it all apart, I could see exactly what supplies I needed and how to reassemble things. I reattached the spring, repaired and braced the broken board (actually, my dad and Aaron did that part), and replaced the dustcover, foam cushion, and batting. Then I used the old fabric as a pattern and guide to sew my red-and-white striped material into a new cover and staple it onto the ottoman.

The trickiest part of the ottoman project was the piping (or welt cord). At first, I thought about skipping the piping, figuring it was just a decorative detail. But as I read about upholstery, I learned that piping actually strengthens seams, which is important on furniture that will get a lot of wear and tear. So I went for it. This tutorial was very helpful. But even so, it took a couple tries before I got the technique right, and my results are far from perfect. (Note: that tutorial says you need a welt cord foot for your sewing machine, but I read elsewhere that a zipper foot works, too, so that’s what I used.)

So I finished the ottoman, had a baby, and then a few months later began to tackle the chair. I originally wanted to reupholster the chair completely, but the process of taking the old fabric off the ottoman was enough of a chore to put me off repeating the process on a bigger scale. I opted to slipcover the chair instead.

First, I made a new cover for the cushion. Since the old cover was removable, I took it off and used it to make a pattern. For guidance, I referred to the same tutorial that I used for the ottoman. By now, piping was old hat, but this time I had to learn how to sew a zipper. The cushion foam was still in good shape, so I stuffed it into the new cushion cover once I had it done.

Now things got more complicated. Around the time I bought the chair, I saw a slipcover tutorial on a blog called Pink and Polka Dot (the post I read is no longer available, but it seems she’s made the content into an e-book). The basic gist is that you drape your fabric – wrong-side-out – over the piece of furniture, trace, add seam allowances, cut, put pieces (wrong-side-out still) back on the chair, pin, and finally sew. (You can get an idea of the process here.)

I spent a long time studying my chair to figure out how to section it out into fabric pieces. Because I was slipcovering rather than upholstering, I couldn’t always use the existing fabric as a guide; for instance, some seams that worked for fabric stapled into place just didn’t make sense for a fitted slipcover. After I cut and pinned my fabric, I had to determine where piping needed to be sandwiched between seams. Finally, I had to deduce the order of assembly, so that seams would match up and tuck in appropriately.

Sewing the slipcover became a process of trial and error. I’d sew an arm, then put it on the chair (right-side out this time) to check the fit. Sometimes I had to take out seams and start again. Sometimes I had to cut new fabric pieces, if my original cut was too short or too narrow. It got easier as I went, since the process on one side could be replicated for the other (provided I remembered what I had done!). Eventually, I prevailed!

My new chair has plenty of imperfections, but it’s good enough for me. In fact, I love it. It’s already become our favorite reading chair. It’s so satisfying to enjoy something I made with novice sewing skills (really! I’ve only had sewing machine since January), a smidgen of geometry, and lots of problem-solving.

First Christmas Silhouette Ornament

Last year, I looked and looked but couldn’t find an ornament I liked for Brandt’s first Christmas. Everything seemed either too chintzy or too generic; I wanted something both personal and fresh. So I decided to make my own. Of course, by the time I decided that, it was too late to actually get it done for Christmas 2010. But I gathered my supplies last year, then finished the project to hang on our tree this year.

At Christmas-time last year, I took a picture of Brandt in profile. (I used the method described here and had Aaron hold Brandt up in front of our white curtains.) Then, I digitally edited that photo to make it a silhouette. I used Pixlr and followed these instructions. However, I didn’t have a steady enough hand with the lasso tool, so I ended up printing my silhouette, cutting it out (getting rid of some of my pixilated edges), and then scanning that cut-out. I opened the resulting digital image in a document (OpenOffice Draw, in my case), sized it to fit my frame (I created an oval outline as a guide), and added the text as word-art (so that I could curve it; I used a font called Henry Morgan Hand, which I downloaded for free here). When everything lined up correctly, I printed it onto photo paper, trimmed around the oval outline, and popped it into the frame.

The frame is a small oval one I found at Michaels a few months ago. It was silver-y with black and clear rhinestones; I spray-painted it red. Then I tied ribbon onto it in order to hang it on the tree.

I love how it turned out, and I’ve already bought a second oval frame (conveniently in a bright green) to make baby girl’s first Christmas ornament next year!

Advent Tree Ornament Exchange

Since it’s the day after Halloween, let’s talk about Christmas! I know, I know, it’s early. But I got to do something really fun last weekend, and if I tell you about it now, you might have time to pull something similar together before December 1.

My friend Hanna called me a couple of weeks ago, excited about an idea. She wanted to make a Jesse tree for her family to use for advent, and she wondered if other gals might want to do the same. “We could do it like a cookie exchange!” she said. “Only we’d have ornaments to keep forever!”

Here’s how it worked: Hanna found a group of ladies who were interested and found a date when we could have our ornament exchange party at her house. There were 13 of us, so she assigned each of us one or two days of advent, leaving Christmas Day open for us all to do our own thing. (We based our days roughly on this model.) Then we each made or bought 13 copies of the ornament(s) for our day(s). At the party, we exchanged ornaments, explaining why we chose what we did to represent our story. Each of us went home with a set of 24 lovely, meaningful ornaments!

I was assigned day 12 – the story of Ruth – and day 14 – Jesse, but really the story of when Samuel anoints David to be future king. For the Ruth story, I made small bundles of dried wheat, because she gleans leftover wheat during the harvest. For the “Jesse” story, I made hearts out of felt; the passage about the anointing of David includes 1 Samuel 16:7, which says that “the Lord looks on the heart.”

I’m not sure yet how I’ll reveal and display the ornaments for Advent. The idea is that you have some sort of system of numbered ornament holders (one friend plans to hang 25 origami paper baskets from a branch; another will make a hanging fabric with burlap pockets). Then your family takes the first ornament out on December 1, reads the accompanying Bible passage, and hangs the ornament on a dedicated tree. (Again, one friend had a cool, twisty tree branch, which she spray-painted white and put in a vase. Another friend had a flat metal tree meant to hang on a wall. Since we have limited space, we may just put our ornaments on our regular Christmas tree for now.) Repeat for December 2-25, and you’ve gone through salvation history up to the birth of Jesus! Even though Brandt won’t really get it this year, I’m excited to start this family tradition.

(There are still a couple ornaments on their way, so I’ll try to do a follow-up post picturing the complete numbered set when I have them.)

May Yard Projects

We dedicated most of our weekends in May to yard work, ending with the grand-daddy project of revamping our entire side yard.

First, remember the lattice I mentioned we intended to install on our garage for vegetable vines? Well, here it is!

Aaron did a super job putting it all together, even though it took him out of his comfort zone to tackle a building task like this without any instructions or experienced help. All he has was my inexperienced help, which mostly consisted of comments like “That post isn’t straight!” or “Can’t the lattice panels line up better?” We’re so pleased with the completed structure. And the squash, beans, melon, cucumber, and morning glory seeds we planted have sprouted and will start twining up the lattice soon.

Oh, and speaking of seeds… You might recall that I worried some critter had dug up my zucchini seeds. Surprisingly, both seeds sprouted! The plants have already grown much bigger than shown in this picture taken just a week ago.

Now, onto the largest project. Four large maples line the south side of our house – great for keeping the house cool in the summer, but not so great for growing a lawn. Our attempts to sow shade-friendly grass seed after we moved in three years ago yielded small clumps of green amid a swath of dirt. And most of those green clumps were dandelions!

So, we opted to abandon the side lawn in favor of a shade garden. Since it will take years to amass the quantity of plants we’ll need to fill the space, we decided to start by digging up the turf, mulching the whole area, and placing a path to connect the front and back yards.

We had 3 cubic yards of gravel and 17 cubic yards of mulch delivered a few days before Memorial Day weekend. That Friday, I started the project by digging the border of what would become our gravel path. On Saturday, Aaron dug the body of the path and installed edging for it, and we worked together to cart, pour, and level the gravel; then Aaron tilled the sod in the area we would mulch. Sunday, we took a break but did spray some weed and grass killer. Monday, we hauled and spread mulch, mulch, and more mulch. Our backs and knees still ache a week later, but the final product is such a satisfying, dramatic improvement!

Here are some before and after shots.

From the front yard looking back, before:

The grass looks deceivingly lush in the picture above. You can see its true state in the picture below.

From the back yard looking towards the front, before:

From the front yard looking back, after:

From the back yard looking towards the front, after:

Another after shot from the back yard:

What a difference, huh? We’re still spreading mulch in our previously-existing flower beds, and we have some leftover gravel we’ll put around our vegetable boxes. I’d like to get an arbor for the front end of the path. Over time, I intend to fill most of the mulched area with hostas, ferns, vinca, and other shade plants. Neighbors have already brought us some divisions of their own shade plants. It’s fun to see our vision for the property turning into reality!

festive {3}

I decorated sugar cookies at a friend’s house over the weekend. What a fun way to get creative! I definitely want to make this an annual Christmas activity.

festive {2}

This idea (which I encountered last year via both Ohdeedoh and domestic life) appealed to my enthusiasm for words and for lovely paper goods. Now our dining room looks like this:

It enchants me every time I walk in the room.

To make the Christmas carol banners, I: 1) jotted down lines from Christmas hymns; 2) counted up the number of each letter in the lines I wanted to use; 3) folded red paper into quarters then cut out letters freehand four at a time; 4) ran out of red paper and decided a few white letters in the mix would look just fine; 5) laid each line out to make sure I had all the letters and distributed the white somewhat evenly; 6) taped letters to baker’s twine; and 7) taped the ends of each line’s twine to the wall/ceiling. It all took much less time than I thought it would.

festive {1}

I got a little crafty and made Brandt’s Christmas stocking. This stocking in the Land of Nod catalog served as my inspiration:

After I tweaked the concept a bit, here’s the result:

I used wool felt, so it required minimal sewing. I’m quite pleased with the result!

Daily::13

11/26 at 11:19 a.m., an early Christmas gift from my in-laws

I failed to snap a “before” picture of the old faucet, but it was at least 20 years old, corroded, and leaking. Aaron’s dad just couldn’t take it, so he made it his Black Friday mission to buy and install a replacement. We’re very grateful, and I think this beauty might inspire some other bathroom updates!

In other plumbing news, Thanksgiving left us a belated gift, in the form of some sort of clog that has backed up kitchen waste water into our washing machine. When you lift the lid to start a load of laundry, you don’t really want to see brackish water with a film of congealed turkey grease filling half the tub. Hopefully, my father- and brother-in-law can fix it, since hiring a plumber isn’t exactly in the budget right now. Either way, we trust God to provide.

Owlery

In my last post, I mentioned that we’re using a woodlands theme for the nursery.  We plan to have many owls nesting in our little forest.  One of the things I remember most from my own room as a girl is a small owl statue that was always displayed somewhere prominently.  I thought it would be fun to carry that over into our baby’s room, and luckily for me, owls are everywhere right now!  Here’s our collection so far, added to by family and friends and our own purchases.

These three sweet fellows are plush, petite lovey blankets, sold as “a pair and a spare” so that you can always have one on hand.

This charming owlette is awake on one side and asleep on the other; she hangs on the door to let friends know if baby is ready to play or not.

These two wise guys make up the first of the Olive Shoot’s stuffed animal collection.

We were thrilled to find this bouncy seat a couple weeks ago; it’s got some of our favorite colors and a host of fun forest friends!

Rocking and Skirting

I’m having a jolly time getting the nursery ready.  I love home decor and design, and it’s a thrill to plan for a baby’s room.  So far, the nursery exists mainly in my head.  We’re working on some prep work (painting, mainly) before we really start buying furniture and assembling the room.

I do, however, have my rocking chair.  I fell in love with this one from the Land of Nod, but I couldn’t justify the price.  However, we happen to live very near a newly-opened Land of Nod outlet.  We stopped in one weekend and found a floor model of exactly the rocker I wanted, marked down DRASTICALLY.  Here it is in our (poorly lit) sitting room:

I love it.  It’s just the right balance between comfy and supportive.  With the curved back, it’s high enough for a tall gal like me to actually rest my head.  I sit in it as often as I can!

Just this week, I also ordered our cribskirt.  We decided against getting a crib set and are instead mixing and matching different things that we like.  The nursery will have a woodlands theme and a color scheme of orange and grey, with some browns and blues thrown in.  For the cribskirt, I found an Etsy seller who makes custom crib bedding, and she was able to get this orange woodgrain fabric (from this collection) for me:

The skirt will be straight with a box pleat.  I can’t wait to see the final product in a few weeks, and I can’t wait to see my nursery vision slowly become a reality!