A Re-upholstering Virgin No More!

That's right. I re-upholstered my first piece of furniture.

I've been wanting to cover a chair I've had for a couple years with different fabric and because of its construction, it didn't require that I remove the previous fabric. It only needed a slip-cover, which I knew I could handle.

This mis-matched pair is currently residing in the corner of the random room off the family room. My craft desk is in here right now, but someday when we buy a house, I'll have a room all to myself, with a door to lock the kiddos out and everything! Come on, you know you dream of the same thing hee hee!

The rocker is nice and neutral, although a bit boring. But you can't beat it for rocking babies to sleep!

The purple chair is the one I wanted to change. Now, don't get me wrong, I still like this fabric and I love the tufting. It'll be great in the girls' room someday but for now purple flowers don't exactly go with anything in my house.

I was originally going to cover it with canvas drop cloth as Miss Mustard Seed does so beautifully but I ended up using the one I had for other projects. Then I remembered I had a couple remnant pieces of blue stripe ticking that I thought would look good. So I started draping and sewing and loved it.

Here's how it turned out:

While sewing, the fabric had to be taken off and put back on the chair quite a bit so it helped that the ticking had a bit of stretch in it. And while it's certainly not perfect, for my first time re-upholstering anything, I'm pretty happy with the results.

The hardest parts were the corners of the chair back and where the back and the seat meet.

See? A bit messy but I couldn't figure out any other way of doing it although I'm sure it exists.

With the remaining pieces of ticking left I made two pillows with coordinating blue floral fabric that I've had for awhile and needed to use.

When it was time to secure the cover to the bottom I simply folded the fabric under and stapled around the legs. Not very well, but who cares? When was the last time a house guest turned your chairs over to inspect the bottom? Exactly.

I wanted to do as little damage to the chair as possible so this method worked for me. Again, probably not the right way but I'm still learning.

The stretchiness made it hard to get the stripes perfectly straight when stapling but I don't mind imperfections. You can see a little wave in the seat and back.

Maybe if I had picked a different pattern or a solid I wouldn't have encountered this problem but I have a serious thing for stripes. They are all over my house.

I'm excited to finally have this project under my belt. Within the next few weeks I'm going to be painting a friends' bedroom set she bought off craigslist. Hopefully I have read enough blogs and tutorials on painting furniture not to screw it up! I'll let you know whether I'm a success or an epic fail at painting. Wish me luck!

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Furniture Feature Friday with Miss Mustard Seed
Perfectly Imperfect

I Heart Yard Sales

I was in yard sale heaven this weekend. Last minute, Friday night, me and two of my lovely neighbors decided to go to a huge rummage sale a local church was hosting. I've been wanting to go yard-saling for forever but in between taking care of small children and wanting to spend time with my husband, it never seems to happen. So when the topic was brought up I eagerly joined in and the plan was made.

And man, did I score big time!

The very first thing I saw when we arrived was this chair:

I've been waiting patiently to find a desk chair on the cheap for my craft desk that needs painting. I don't think you can beat $2!!! It was perfect and will be lovely when it's been re-upholstered and painted.

I spied two tables full of random linens next and found a near perfect lace tablecloth also for $2!

It has a few yellow spots which can easily be removed and is slightly too small for my table but I don't care...I love it!

These two pillowcases I thought would be cute for the girls' room someday:

I hit the motherload at one of the tables and got some bundles of super cute fabric:

Like I need more fabric, but I couldn't resist such a good deal.

The last three things I found cost me all of 85 cents:

I've been wanting a cloche since they are everywhere in blog-land and I found 2! The one with the marble cheese plate is super heavy and gorgeous. The one with the flower design is wood and plastic and will get painted and used for display. I grabbed the goblet because I loved the color and it was only ten cents!

The grand total for everything I bought was $15.25!! I'd say I got my money's worth!

How about you? Did you find any treasures this weekend?

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Fabric Rosette Lampshade

My latest project almost had it in for me. And my kitchen table.

When I started this project I naively thought that I'd simply whip up a few flowers, glue them to the shade and ta-da!!! a gorgeous and effortless new lampshade.
Gorgeous...Yes.
Effortless?...Not so much.
But we'll save the drama for later.

Sooooo, a while back I refurbished a couple of ebay lamps.
I ended up in love with one of them and it's now on my nightstand, but the other one needed some improvements.

For starters, it was boring. And the white shade clashing with the creamy spray paint bugged me. It's like when my hubby wears black dress shoes with navy or brown socks. I start twitching.

So I decided to change everything.

I bought three yards of white muslin and a new box of 24 glue sticks for my glue gun and got to work.

This is how my table looked for days...

And days...

And days...
My table became a barren wasteland of ripped muslin and dried glue strings everywhere.

You see, genius that I am decided to cover the entire shade with the rosettes. Not just a small part of it. So after many days of twirling and blistered fingers I had this:

Not very promising. But I stuck it out. For two weeks.

The problem was, after twirling a dozen or so rosettes, my fingers would cramp and start to look like the hands of an 85-year old, so I could only do so many a day.

But I had seen a shade covered in white fabric rosettes at Homegoods and I was determined to copy it, no matter how blistered and distorted my hands became. So I hung in there for another week (yes, it took me THREE WEEKS to finish what should have been an easy project) and FINALLY finished what will now be known as 'the devil's lampshade.'

I decided to spray paint the lamp a pretty aqua. I think it will be darling in the girls' room someday when they have their own room.

I ended up using all three yards of muslin and almost the entire box of glue sticks for this one project. But I actually think it was worth it. I love the end result!

I'm still not completely happy with this combination of lamp and shade. I just won a few beautiful milk glass lamps off of ebay so I'm sure I'll find a good match among them. Once my fingers heal, of course.

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Patriotic Table Runner

Oye, things have been busy around here recently!

Lots of bbqs with awesome neighbors, lots of coffees with other mommies nearby, lots of new projects and sewing, but sadly, not lots of blogging. Right now, blogging is near the end of my list, although I hope to change that eventually (as in, when at least one of my children is in school and I have an iota of free time to myself!)

I have big plans and big ideas swirling around in my brain for my blog and where I want it to go, but now is not the time to act on those ideas. With another deployment coming up, as well as another mini-cross country move, there's a bit too much on my plate as it is. So big plans are going to have to wait.

Moving on!

I'm not usually big on decorating for holidays, with the exception of Christmas and Halloween, but this year I did do a 4th of July theme on my dining table. A few weeks ago, I had a lapse of sanity and decided to take all three kids to Wal-mart with me. Amazingly, they were wonderful and I found some good deals in the fabric section. I always take a peak in the remnants to see if there's anything worthwhile and I snagged a long piece of navy duck cloth for cheap which I decided to pair with some blue stripe ticking fabric to make a reversible table runner. For the pop of red I needed, gerber daisies in old wine bottles did the trick.

I love that it doesn't scream, 'It's the 4th of July!!!!' but is still patriotic. I'll be able to break it out for Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Military Spouse Appreciation Day, the Marine Corps Birthday...it will get plenty of use!

Here is what it looks like on the opposite side.

I love how it turned out and now I'm on a table runner frenzy. I first got the idea from Elizabeth & Co's burlap and ruffles table runner, which I love! Burlap is my new favorite fabric. Who knew that it irons so well? And it doesn't hurt that it's super-duper affordable. If it wasn't quite so scratchy I would totally cover my couch in burlap. I'm not joking. Cause I'm cheap like that.

Here's my version of the burlap runner (with cotton drop cloth for ruffles, also cheap-o!!)

I love how a simple table runner can dress up the table instantly. I think I might make one for every holiday now. As long as I can keep the kiddos from touching it when their hands are covered in maple syrup or tomato sauce.


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