Thursday, May 31, 2012

First Slipcover Completed

Hi everyone! I am glad you are reading this post today because my slipcover has now be completed. Okay...well maybe not exactly 100% completed because the only thing left to do is to stain the armchair legs. However, I think I will be working in that last part after the second armchair is slipcovered.

Are you ready for some pictures? I hope so because I am excited to show you some so here we go! :)


That was my quick "Before and After" from what we started with and after adding the final piece, which was the skirt. I must say that I am happy with the results.


To make the skirt, I took some extra leftover canvas dropcloth, which I measured out before I started making my slipcover, and wrapped it around the chair and secured it with pins.


Once the pins were in place, I took my hot glue gun to keep the fabric in place (yes, I know that most people actually sew the skirt on, but I didn't want to do it by hand or by using my sewing machine because using my glue gun was much faster).
Also, I think we purchased my sewing machine for $30 at Wal-Mart...something like that...and it isn't big at all. I still used it to sew the back of the fabric on the chair, but that was it.


I loved using these push-pins to hold the skirt on before I glued. They were given to me by my mother-in-law and they came in handy for this project big time!

Next, I took some twine and measured out how much I needed to wrap around the bottom of the chair. I did this because I wanted the twine to act as piping around the chair.


Once that was done, I glued some extra canvas dropcloth around the twine to give it a piping effect.
This "piping" is what I used to hide where the skirt fabric met up with the chair seat.
This helped make it all come together and look a little cohesive.


Here is a close-up of the "piping" and the skirt bottom I added.


I also took some more pictures of the frilly fabric that I made to add to the seat and the back of the chair for some extra pizzaz, if you will.
I really like the frilly-ness I added in different places because it makes the chair a little unique.
I love it!


And here she is in all her glory! What do you think?
Do you like it, too?
:)


One more quick reminder of the progress to completion:


I can't wait to start on the second armchair and hope it turns out just as good! :)

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I really appreciate all of my readers out there!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

My First Hand-Sewn Slipcover

Yes!! You read that title correctly! I hand-sewed a slipcover for one of our armchairs and it was my first slipcover!

What?!?! That sounds crazy, I know...but I did it and am pretty pleased with the results so far.
I say "so far" because the chair is not completely finished (like some of the projects I seem to do around here) but it is coming along quite nicely and I can't wait to start on our second armchair.

So here is what I started with.



Here is a quick before and after:


Now back to the original piece.
I bought these chairs for $25 at a Restore and love how sturdy they are.



Pretty, huh? I am kidding, of course!
So if you look closely, you can see some minor marks on the chair (which I went ahead and labeled for you).



I thought about taking pictures of each step...which I might do for the second chair, but I just wanted to get this puppy done so when my daughter took her 3 hour nap during the week each day, I worked hard on getting the slipcover done.
Also, I followed a quick tutorial from Miss Mustard Seed which you can take a look at here: six part video series on slipcover tutorial.
If you scroll down mid-page on that link above, you can click on each video to get a good idea of how to make a slipcover.

So here are some pictures of a little bit of the slipcover process.
FYI- I used canvas dropcloth for this project.


You can see here that I still needed to cover up the frayed ends and since I sewed by hand, some of the lines aren't perfectly straight, but that is A-Okay with me.  :)


I bought some twine at Lowe's and wrapped it (using my hot glue gun...genius, I know...haha) using left over canvas dropcloth.


I still need to stain the legs with some left-over stain from when I did our banisters and I also need to make a skirt for the chair which I am working on doing.


Here are some close-ups of the wrapped twine and the details of the chair.



Stay tuned for more....
and if you see that table over on the left there by the chairs in this photo, be reading because I still have to tell you all about it, too.

What do you think? Have you used canvas dropcloth to recover anything?

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

More Light in the Kitchen!!

Hooray for having more light in our house!!

I am so excited to share this post with you today because it means our light fixture, which I blogged about here, is finally hanging up in our kitchen nook.  :)

Over the weekend, my hubby helped me hang the light fixture (or more like he hung it all by himself and I just supervized :)...) in our nook by using some little gadgets we found at Lowe's.


This was the little spot above the table where we knew the light fixture would hang, so we (And again, by "we" I mean my hubby) measured a few spots and decided where the light would hang.

We bought a ceiling hook that worked perfectly for our light fixture and here is how it looked right after we hung this puppy up.


Now right after we hung our light fixture, we knew there was more to do before it was completed.
Here is a small list of things we still need to do.

1. Do something about the cord that is obviously not suppose to be on the table and buy an extension cord  :)
2. Think of a quick solution for covering up that big 'ol chain hanging from the ceiling
(We talked about buying a new chain or possibly wrapping fabric around it to pretty it up a bit)
3. Do something with that empty wall space to the left (any ideas?? I would love to hear them!)

So let's get to the first problem- "doing something about the cord hanging by the table"

So part of the solution to problem #1?
Well, we went to Lowe's again and had to buy an extension cord so the light would plug in and be functional.
However, we still have yet to connect everything together but we are hoping to get this done in the next few days.

Problem #2- what to do with the big 'ol chain that isn't lookin' too hot?
Well, that is still left to be decided, but I think I might take some left-over canvas dropcloth (again, love that stuff) and twist it around the cord just to make it a little bit more presentable.

Issue #3- What to do with the empty wall space?
Some ideas include hanging some wall art or picture frames, but I would like to try something a little bit different than that. Maybe I will hang an oval shaped mirror with a few frames off to the side just to keep things interesting. But like I said, if you have ideas for me, let me know! I would love to hear them for inspiration! :)


I have a few other projects that I am in the middle of and will get to those this week too...but I just have to take it all one day at a time.


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