My Little Apprentice

With our move to Oklahoma, change seems inevitable. We'll be in a new house, new neighborhood, whole new city and state! One thing I am not planning on changing is my "projects" as my husband calls them. I'm hoping to have more time to do more of them! And it also got me reflecting on past projects and the help I've received with them.

I try to do most of my projects at night after Con-Man goes to bed. This way I have more time to focus on him and plus it's hard to get stuff done sometimes with a 2 year old hanging off you. But sometimes I needed to get started on things while he was still awake, and I'm beginning to worry- 

What am I teaching my son?

That it's ok to tear apart furniture? He was all about "helping" me pull out the staples when I recovered our dining chairs.

That it's always helpful to make sure your cars will still roll well on the newly slipcovered chair. He kept a careful eye out making sure I was fitting the fabric correctly.

Of course it is nice to have a helping hand when painting a room. (Not really! He was dying to copy me so I gave him a brush and an empty cup.)

Blurry picture but in my defense I took this with my IPhone while holding a paint brush, and Con-Man never sits still.

Of course like most young'ins sometimes he'd rather just sit back and relax and watch Mom do all the work; like when I was prepping my coffee table frames.

I love it when the Con-Man takes interest in what I'm doing. Hopefully he'll learn a lot about doing things on your own, be independent and will be handy around the house. What woman wouldn't love that?!

Do you encourage your children to participate in your projects? Do they enjoy seeing you work?

Chair a Holic

Hi My name is Rachelle and I am a Chair A Holic.

Ever since we got the news that we are moving I've been trying to clear our clutter and decide what furniture we'll take with us to the new house and what we might try to sell. And something I've discovered is that I have quite a few chairs. 

Vintage Chairs

Dining Chairs

Mid Century Lounge Chairs

Cafe Chairs (I have 2 of these!)

Outdoor Stools

Lounge Chair

I don't know what it is but I LOVE chairs! All kinds of chairs, small chairs, big chairs, lounge chairs, dining chairs, side chairs, ect. I may be in danger of becoming one of those people on that hoarders show.

I know a lot of people have collections but chairs are kind of a big thing to collect.

Famous chairs I'd love to get my hands on:

So what to keep and what to get rid of? I think that once we find a new house in Altus I'll have a better idea. Until then I'm going to enjoy my chairs, all 25 million of them!

Do you have a favorite furniture or decorative accessory you can't get enough of?



Slipcover How To

Hi Everyone! Thank you for all the kind comments you been sending on the chair slipcover. Sorry this post is late, I was out of town for a few days and haven't been near a computer!

I'm back home now and will finally share with you how I made the slipcover for my chair. It all started with this post from Apartment Therapy on slipcovering a reading chair. The chair was similar to mine and it gave me inspiration to finally do something about my "elephant in the corner".

Before

After



I did some reseach on slipcovering and read a few articles:

The Nester on her slipcover project

And I did a lot of searching for fabric. Some of you have asked where I found such a deal on the Dwell fabric. I found it on this website: http://www.onlinefabricstore.net/ in case you wanted to get some of your own. Someone also asked if the fabric is durable. It's an upholster grade fabric and is made of cotton. I haven't had it that long so I'm hoping it lasts a long time and continues to look good. I'll probably spray some Scotch Guard on it to protect it from stains. I'll give you any updates as they come!

Ok, enough talk down to business!
I started with some old sheets I bought at Goodwill. I wanted to make a templates to use for cutting out my nice fabric. Since I'm a first time slipcover-er I didn't want to waste precious fabric with mess ups.

I cut large rectangles out, then fit them snuggly around each section of the chair, pinning as I went. I wanted the original shape of the chair to show through so I pinned as closely as I could around the edges.

After I did that I trimmed any extra fabric edges to get about a 1.5" seam allowance I would to for my templates. I marked the templates so I would remember where each one was supposed to go.

I then used my templates to cut my Dwell fabric out. Using the sheet templates allowed me to line up the pattern how I wanted.

Then I repinned my new fabric templates inside out on my chair to get my slipcover shape.

Then sewed the whole thing up. It was a little cumbersome with all the fabric laying everywhere but I was afraid to unpin anything and loose my shape.

After I sewed it all up I refitted it on the chair to see how it fit. I pulled out a few seams that could use some refitting and stitched up a few spots that I had trouble getting the first time around.


The arm for example I pinned again and resewed.

Then is was time for the cushion, I thought that since I have done a few pillows in the past this would be easy. But it was time consuming and hard.

I traced the shape of the cushion onto the fabric leaving a 1.5" seam allowance.

To get the fabric allowance for the middle cushion thickness I used a piece of string and ran it all along the edge. Then laid it out on the fabric, measured a few inches on either side, and cut it out.


The harded part was sewing along the T-Shape of the cushion. Other than that it wasn't bad.


I then pinned the fabric around my cushion in the same fashion as I did the chair, leaving an opening in the back.

Once I finally finished sewing (I've never sewed this much in my whole life!) I got to work on the bottom. First I cut off the outdated skirt.

Originally I was going to staple the fabric to the underside of the chair to give it a more upholstered feel. But in the end I just used pins to adhere it so I can take the slipcover off whenever it needs cleaning.

Slipcover before skirt tucked under

Though the pictures don't show it I ended up sewing a piece for underneath the cushion using some leftover sheet fabric.

Then I was all done!

I hope this has been helpful and gives anyone who was thinking of trying this themselves some courage. You can do it!

Read more at http://diyshowoff.com/2013/08/15/before-and-after-diy-contest/#DlHqDqOhFOFmE5zd.99