A Stitch In Time...

Good afternoon all. Today I am reviewing a slip cover project, but first a few updates. 

 

I have been enjoying a little downtime, and by that I mean putting aside the blog to handle a few things that have fallen apart around the house.  My oven bit the dust just in time for my 12 Edible Gifts of Christmas idea.  I was in a panic about what to do, until a friend pointed out that changing the element is super simple.  I ordered the part online last night and it should be here by the weekend.  I predict an appliance repair post coming soon. 

Not to be left out the kitchen faucet decided it needed attention as well.  The faucet was leaking copious amounts of hot water and when I disassembled the handle to replace the washer in the valve, I realized it was too cheap to be repaired and had to run out and get a new faucet.  I didn’t take detailed pictures of this project because I don’t want to fess up to my 1970’s brown porcelain sink just yet. 

I wanted to take a moment and give a shout out to the nice people I met in the grocery store yesterday afternoon.  Welcome, I hope that you enjoy the recipes we were discussing in the grocery aisles. I’ve never really met a stranger; I know that good conversations and ideas can come from anywhere. 

Today I am going to talk about a little slip cover project I finished recently.  I say finished because this project started a couple of years ago with my search for barrel chairs for my den.  After scouring the blogosphere for months I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for. I love the chair in the corner of this den from Young House Love.



Young House Love-House Tour

I stumbled into the Goodwill store on my lunch one day at precisely the right moment to swoop up two barrel chairs in good condition for $10 each.  I remember the employee telling me I was never going to get them in my Mom Mobile, little did he know I had stow-n-go seats and chango-presto I popped them in the back of my minivan. 

I had no idea back then I would start a blog, but I took these outside before cleaning them to commemorate their transformation.  I began by taking the skirt off the bottom and exposing the modern looking legs. Next I used my Bissell Little Green to give the chairs a thorough steam cleaning and left them in the sun to dry (Quick Note: If you have kids or dogs you should have one of these, splurge a little and get the heated model). 

After searching high and low for the right fabric I came to the conclusion that all of them would cost more than I wanted to spend, especially given that I was chicken about sewing slip covers.  I happened onto on the Ikea website one day when the light bulb went off. 

The EKTORP TULLSTA slip covers were very similar in shape to my two chairs; I thought I could modify these to fit my chairs without having to slipcover from scratch. As a bonus they were only $30 each so I wouldn’t be out much money, this fabric would have cost much more than I wanted to spend spiffing up my new-to-me chairs. The premade covers were thrifty and efficient. I went home to check the measurements of my chair against those on the website, and they were close enough I could make it work.  The cushions were the perfect size I removed them from the old covers and slipped them into the new ones no problem. 

Since you all know how much I love to confess, let me disclose that a friend came to the house two years ago just before Easter and helped me get started modifying these slip covers.  We put the slip covers on the chairs inside out and she pinned the profile of the arms until they were snug.  Then she whipped stitched them with a needle and dark thread to be sure they fit. We pulled them off and ran them through the sewing machine.  Once she was satisfied with the contour she would pull the dark thread out easily.  I liked this technique; it saved the fingertips from the unnecessary pin pricks.  

Now for further cleansing of the conscience I will say that we took a break from our sewing for lunch and pedicures and by the time we came back to the covers it was quite late and we called it a day.  I tucked the extra fabric at the end into the arms and had every intension of finishing them later.  Fast forward 2 years and some months to this past weekend. I was hold up inside during nasty weather and decided to scratch this one off my to-do list. 

I began once again by removing the covers and placing them inside out on the chairs so I could see where we left off.  You can see the fabric that would have been the front arm of the chair; this is what I used to bring the arm together to the seat of the chair.

I pulled the seam together all the way down to the edge and decided to rip a seam on the front seat to sew the extra fabric from the arm. 

I pulled the edges together to create a new seam at the base of the arm.   I realize that is hard to describe in words, have a look at the pictures, because the general idea is the same even though each project is different. 

The finished product is pictured here. My plan is to live with this a while longer and decide if it needs any further tweaking before I cut off the excess and commit to the changes, just to be sure.

Come back later this week to see what I pull out of my grab bag of ideas. Let’s all relax and celebrate not knowing what comes next shall we.