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Monday 13 August 2012

Making a covered footstool

Something a little bit different from me today. This weekend I finally finished covering a footstool, a project that I started nearly a year ago...!

When we bought our sofa and chairs my husband really wanted a footstool to go with them, but we have a small living room and the ones that went with the suite we had chosen were pretty large (and expensive). A kind friend from church had given him an old footstool that was just perfect, but very old fashioned. So I rashly promised him that if we bought some of the fabric to match the chairs I would cover the footstool for him. Well the old green embroidered footstool has sat in our living room for the last year, with a pile of neatly folded fabric, waiting for me to work some magic.

I have a GCSE in textiles but my project was a teddy bear in a pair of dungarees, so it wasn't much preparation for covering a footstool. However, at least I had a sewing machine and knew how to work it! And after several hours of unpicking stitching that had gone wrong, desperately trying to sew in a circle and hand stitching the bottom on, I'm very proud to say that I managed it.


The trick, I discovered, was to pin the fabric around the footstool so that it was tight and I knew exactly where to sew. I sewed the two ends of the long rectangle together first to go round the side, then put this on the footstool inside out and laid a large circle of fabric over the top, upside down, so that I had the back of the fabric showing. Once again I pinned the fabric together whilst it was on the footstool so I knew it would be a perfect fit (then spent half an hour trying to get the footstool out the middle... it may have been a little too tightly pinned!). I sewed round the top in a (sort of) circle, trimmed the seams and turned it out the right way. I popped the cover on the footstool, turned it upside down, laid another circle of fabric over the top and tucked the edges in all the way round. Then I spent a fun few hours hand stitching the bottom on. I finished last night whilst watching the Olympic closing ceremony. 

Whoop! I think it looks really good. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for us. I don't think upholstery is really for me though... 

I'm linking this post up with handmade monday again. Do pop over and take a look at what others have been making this week. Hello to fellow handmade monday-ers who have come over to see what I've made :-)

And if you're looking for the tutorials about how to set up a blog, they're here. And more coming this week as promised! 

13 comments:

  1. Well done - I covered some sofa cushions last summer for a caravan and ended up doing 90% by hand with a curved needle as I couldn't for the life of me fathom out how to do them on the machine. If I ever need to repeat the experience I'll know where to find instructions and advice :-)

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    1. They make curved needles?! That would have made it so much easier! I think it might have been quicker to do it all by hand rather than spending ages figuring out how to do it on the machine.

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  2. You have made a nice fit. Well done for getting it finished. Hugs mrs .a.

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    1. You should have seen attempt 1 - it was like it was wearing a dress! Glad I figured it out in the end.

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  3. It looks fab - well done, not an easy task.

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  4. That footstool is fab. Very jazzy! Far too nice to put your feet on.

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  5. That's a job well done! I'm not sure I would have lasted the length of time it took you to get the cover off though. I may have just kicked it in frustration then wondered why my bad language wasn't making it stripe quicker :)

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  6. Sounds like it was learning curve but it turned out great! well done to you!

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  7. A great job. It looks fantastic. These kind of jobs are always trickier than they look :)

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  8. How clever are you!!! I also did a lot of knitting during the closing ceremony ( it did go on for a while - but i really enjoyed it!). have a good week, Jo x

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  9. Thanks for all your lovely comments. It just shows you that a bit of perseverance can pay off!

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  10. It looks great, and it's so satisfying transforming something - I'm sure it will give you great pleasure every time it gets used!

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  11. That looks really good! It's really hard, doing upholstery, we did a bench (not probably exactly the right word, it's an old sewing seat of some sort) that had been passed down and the original seat was just worn out. It was difficult but finally worth it when finished. The worst thing was it had a curve so the fabric had to tuck a bit.
    But anyway, you did a great job, especially since you had to sew, AND you have stripes to match up! Bravo!

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Thanks for your comments, I always love reading them.

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