Tutorial: Kids Chair Cushion

Here's what I did on my day off: Kids chair cushions! 4 of them. 

Here's the adorable fabric up close:

Here's the chair I started with (see previous post here):

Those chairs (and the matching table) got a huge makeover. More on that in another post. 

Here's my template. Yes, that's Sonya Tayeh. No, I don't think she's a genius, (I know, disagree all you want), she was just on the back of my magazine which I used to make my "pattern." I just traced half of my chair seat, a little larger than the actual seat. The top edge is actually the "fold" of the fabric. You need two folded pieces to make the cushion. 

Here's what one cushion looks like (sideways) cut out. I used XL rick-rack (one of my favorite things right now) as the cushion holders. 

Place the two fabric pieces together (wrong side out).

Sew 3 of the four sides together. Don't sew the side where the cushion holders are going to go.

Because the rick rack was the huge kind, I needed 4 yards of it. Each cushion used two 18" pieces. 

I love these two colors. I couldn't choose just one... so I didn't.

I set the cushion on the chair and put the rick rack right where I wanted it on the chair. I put it inside, then sewed almost the whole side together, leaving a 4" section open so I could turn it inside out. 

Here's what it looked like:

Then I stitched a cross in the center to give it depth when I put the filling in. 

Filled it up...

I sewed the whole side together, not just the section that was open. Then I also sewed the rick rack together because I felt like it pulled the cushion to close to the back of the chair the way it was. 

Ivy's dressed it up with her Easter necklaces. :)

And those are the cushions. :) Details on the painting of the chairs will come later. 

Aloha, Rebecca

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$2 Shelf - COMPLETED!

I took on the March "Before & After" challenge at www.shineyourlightblog.com. My first project was the $2 shelf. See the original post here.

BEFORE:

in process...

AFTER:

Painted in Shiloh

top shelf

 middle shelf...

bottom shelf...

The brown catch-alls in the center and the crystal one on the right were my grandma's. The brown one has a note in it from my grandma. Those kinds of things make me really happy.

The shelf is up on our bedroom wall, and now that it's up, I really want to paint the walls. A pool blue? Grey? Sage? Celery? I think it would make the shelf look better. But how can I justify to my landlords that I should be able to paint the walls because I want a shelf to look better? 

I had actually finished the shelf a couple weeks ago. I hung it up, staged it, didn't take any photos, then got a text from my husband a few hours later: 

"Your shelf was hanging by a thread 

with half of the stuff you had on it on the ground..."

Oops. Thank you Kit for hanging my shelf properly. Thank you to the people who had the garage sale last month who gave this to me for $2. :)

Aloha, 

Becca

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GOAL: the Pottery Barn table and chairs

My very first post (aside from our "Welcome" post) was about a Pottery Barn table someone had given to Ivy. It's a great set of furniture, and I want it to turn out awesome. Usually when I want things to turn out awesome, I fear starting on them until the stars align. Well, I really just want to do something with it, so I'm making a goal to finish this set by the end of March. I'm even entering this Before and After Party, so that I can't back out:




Here's my original post:

In December, one of my students' moms came up to me and said she had an old Pottery Barn kids table and chair set. She said, "It was a gorgeous set, but it's been used a lot and is more of a project, than a gift. We don't really want to give it to just anyone... Would you like to have it?" (Her daughter loves Ivy, and even named her American Doll "Ivy"... :) )


Little did she know that our car tent outside had been used by my brother and his wife to upcycle furniture for the past 4 months. Needless to say I gladly took the table and chairs off her hands. We started sanding it (see the green chair?), but haven't done much more than that. I'm dying to get my hands on it, but I think it is just a bit of a big project for me, so I'm reluctant to get started. I know what I want it to look like, but I'm procrastinating to get started. Here's some before pics. When I finally get it done, you'll see the afters.

Until then...


-Becca


Back to today...




Well, i've made a little progress... I sanded and painted two chairs. Here's the poor yellow one before:

Getting primed:

Godiva, our dog, lurking in the background: 

I have this oops paint. It's a metallic aqua. I also used it for the stripes on my mirror. See post here.

The first coat looked HORRIBLE (pic below). Really see-thru.

But the second went on nice. The one on the left has 3 coats. The one on the right has just 1. 

Kit jumped in too and is sanding the 3rd chair. I have no idea what to do with the table, cause i just want it to be AWESOME!! Anyways. Now I have a goal to get it done!

--Becca

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What I made for Kit for Valentine's Day...

I know. I know. Valentine's Day is over. But I couldn't post it before/on V-Day because I didn't want Kit to see it. So, here it is now. I can't remember exactly which blog(s) I saw it on, but this is an idea floating around blog-world. Plus, my husband doesn't read blogs, so it's new to him!

To start, I went out and bought a $6 canvas. Was trying to find some other hard surface that I could upcycle and potentially hang on a wall, but gave in and spent the $6.

Then I chose my current "it" fabric, (which I've used on the no-sew tin and the pillow cover), and cut it so I could fold it over the back. Don't worry, there's not much more of this brown/cream foliage fabric, so you'll probably only have to endure a few more posts that include it...

I've recently (as of last Monday, yes, the day before V-Day) begun to use Modge Podge for the first time ever. So, I covered the canvas with the Podge, then placed it front-side down, and then folded the edges over and "modged" those.

A few days earlier I had downloaded a ton of new fonts, figured out our "important dates" and printed it out onto a sage-colored scrapbook paper cut to size.

After another layer of Modge Podge dried on the outside of the fabric, I placed the paper on the fabric and put another layer of the Podge on it.

Now this is where Kit decided his gift should live:

It's on a shiloh-colored shelf (which matches the desk and mirror in this post), next to Kit's side of the bed. That's his grandfather's watch in front of it. He passed away in August 2010. Our friend from Slovenia took those pics of Ivy last April and he and his girlfriend had them framed for us. (The one on the right ended up in a Slovenian catalog!!) They just had a daughter and I sent them the baby bunting in this post a few weeks back. The ceramic dog is one of Kit's high school art projects.

I like the shine of the Modge Podge. And you can see the brush strokes.

Aloha,
--Becca

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