Chair Seat Covers, Part 1

Last December, one of our cousins contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in a sewing project to make covers for her kitchen chairs. She forwarded a couple of sample photos and asked if this was 'my thing', which made me chuckle. :-)

It had been a while since I made the slipcovers for my couch and the opportunity to do some 'real' sewing was irresistible. We worked out the details for the project and agreed she would buy the fabric and drop it off along with one of the chairs in January and pick everything up when the covers were finished.

The original plan was to make 7 kitchen chair seat covers. I prepared a rough estimate of the fabric yardage so she could order enough fabric, plus a little extra. 

When she arrived to drop off the fabric and one of the kitchen chairs, there was a bonus bar stool chair and a request to make 3 padded covers to match the kitchen chairs. Fortunately, she had ordered a couple of extra yards of fabric, which proved to be more than enough for all 10 slipcovers.

With an open date for completion, I was able to work on the chair covers and keep up with orders from my ArtFire shop for the next several weeks.

I began working on the kitchen chair covers first, so I could think about how to construct and pad the bar stool covers. This blog post is about the kitchen chair covers; my next post will be about the padded bar stool covers and will have more detailed how-to's.

I began by making a muslin version of the chair seat cover. To make a pattern, I pinned a piece of Pattern Ease tracing material to the seat and traced the shape of the seat with pencil. The pencil line was intended to be my seam line, so I added about 1/2 inch all around for a seam allowance. I folded the pattern in half vertically and made some adjustments to make sure all the corners and contours were symmetrical.

The back of the skirt slips under the back of the chair and is secured to the rest of the skirt with velcro. The skirt pieces wrap around the legs to keep the cover in place. To accommodate the narrower space at the back, the pattern for the seat has an extension a couple of inches long that joins to the back skirt.

Next, the seat pattern piece was cut out of muslin and pinned to the chair seat, making sure the corners fit along the seat back. The strips of muslin were pinned along the front and back to determine the skirt placement and height. Then I marked the seam lines in pencil right on the muslin pieces, which I then basted together in dark thread. Here's how it looked when we tried it on to check the fit:

Some additional markings and adjustments made to the muslin to make it fit properly and hang evenly were transferred to my pattern piece, and then I was ready to cut into the home dec fabric.

The first seat cover made of the home dec fabric turned out almost exactly as expected, but I ended up lengthening the extension at the back of the seat so that the back skirt fit better on the remaining 6 kitchen chair covers.

Here's a peek at the inside seams:

The front skirt is made of 3 strips of fabric, joined together so that the seams would fall right at the front outside corner of each front leg of the chair. I used my serger and a wide overlock stitch to finish all the raw edges of the fabric, then turned up the hem and finished it with a blind-hem stitch. 

I added fabric facings to the corners at the back of the seat section for support and a neat finish before attaching the front and back skirts. This seam was also serged to prevent the fabric from unraveling.

Last, I sewed velcro onto the ends of the back and front skirt, then folded and top-stitched them to hem them in place.

Here's a look at the back of the seat cover, about to be secured with the velcro:

Everything fits nice and smooth:

And here's one last look at the front and back of a finished seat cover:

After the first one was finished, each of the remaining kitchen chair seat covers took between 2-3 hours to sew. Cutting as efficiently as possible, a little over one yard of home dec fabric made 2 covers.

I really liked the way these turned out and I may just have to do this again for my own dining room chairs!

A Little Bit of Paint...

A month or so ago, my friend Kris invited some of us 'Material Girls' to join her in attending a Paint Your Pet art party, a fundraiser for Hug-a-Bunny Rabbit Rescue.

It sounded like fun, but I was ambivalent about attending since most of my painting experience involves rollers or stencils on walls and spray paint on furniture - and nothing requiring drawing a face! I finally decided to give it a whirl and I'm glad I did because the more I look at my painting, the less I critique it:

The fundraiser event was held at a local volunteer ambulance meeting room and was run by Bottle & Bottega New Jersey-Central. They set us up with canvas to paint on, brushes, easels, aprons and paint and guided us through creating a painting based on a photo of our pets. This was not so much a painting lesson as it was an introduction to the experience of creating. For me, it was challenging, but fun.

I have lots of acrylic paints and various brushes in my craft stash, which I've accumulated and used to paint things like wood shelves and frames or stencils on walls. I rarely draw anything, unless it's to sketch a pattern for a bag or some sewing or building project.

Of course, I made it more difficult on myself, because I insisted on using a photo with both Keli and Penny in it, so I had to do everything twice - but really, how could I choose one over the other? Here's my inspiration photo, taken last November for Thanksgiving:

We started by sketching shapes onto the canvas with pencil. I was rather proud of my efforts:

Next we filled in the background and began shading our pets' features. I picked bright blue colors for my background and planned to change the bandanas colors, too. Here, one of the instructors is trying to help me figure out how to add some shading and mix colors:

Photo by Bottle & Bottega New Jersey-Central

We were given acrylic paints in basic colors - red, blue, yellow, green, purple, black and white. For other colors, we needed to mix and blend these together.

We had about 1.5 hours for painting and the time flew by so quickly! I spent a lot of time fixated on trying to mix just the right shades of Westie whites, and by the time I figured it out, we were almost out of time. So my face details were a bit rushed and to me, feel a bit unfinished. As a learning piece, I'm happy with it, but I think I could have done better.

Kris did a great job painting her bunny, Galen, one of Hug-A-Bunny's rescues; she even brought her own brush:

Photo by Bottle & Bottega New Jersey-Central

Here's Kris's finished painting:

You can see lots more photos of the event including a group photo on Bottle & Bottega New Jersey-Central's Facebook page in this Photo Album: 5-5-2013 Hug-A-Bunny Rabbit Rescue Fundraiser. Everyone did a good job of painting their pets and the rescue raised about $700!

Will I try painting again? Maybe. I see myself doing some sketching again soon, because I'd love to use this same photo to make a small picture quilt.... and maybe painting with thread!

Westie Insulated Lunch Bag

Back in September 2011, I made several Insulated Lunch Bags for my niece and some cousins and fully intended to make more - and to attempt to make a sewing pattern, too.

Last month, I finally had a chance to spend some time working on a new bag - but first, I had to locate and decipher my scribbled notes from 2011.

Around the same time I was contacted by Westie Rescue of Tennessee about donating something to their silent auction fundraiser, held during their annual Meet & Greet event in mid-April.

Working with a deadline usually helps me stay focused on a project, so I decided to make a Westie themed lunch bag for them and begin drafting a pattern at the same time.

The rescue's colors are blue and red, so I chose a lightweight blue denim for the cover with red zippers and accents.

Of course, there had to be Westies on each side in the form of a machine embroidered applique, which I digitized myself.

The quilting and top-stitching were done in red thread and I selected a cute Westie cotton print for the lining of the front outside pocket and trim inside. Not shown in the photos is a removable shoulder strap.

To save time, I omitted some of the extra pockets and contrast pieces from my original bag design.

To go with the lunch bag, I made a couple of matching accessories. This is a quilted pocket key chain, made using an in-the-hoop embroidery design from Five Star Fonts. I used the same denim fabric and red embroidery thread in a diamond quilting pattern to match the quilting on the lunch bag and added a red metal snap for the closure.

    

I thought this mug rug would be a nice accessory to go with a lunch bag, made with a freebie design from FSF. I edited the design add a Westie outline that I digitized a few years ago.

While I was working on the Westie lunch bag, I also began the process of reconstructing my notes and writing a pattern and instructions. Unfortunately, I lost several days of sewing time to work on my tax returns, so as the deadline to finish and mail out the bag drew closer, I had to delay writing instructions. And I forgot to take in-progress photos .... Soooo - I will just have to make a few more bags!

One 'good' thing about procrastinating so long - I recently had an opportunity to chat with one of the girls who has been using her lunch bag since 2011, and she informed me that she still really likes it and that her Mom washes it all the time and it still looks great. I take that as high praise from a 9 year-old! :-)

I've already pulled fabrics to make several more lunch bags and I'm setting a goal to have at least one bag, with photos *and* a complete written draft finished by the end of May.

Giveaway Day Winner

Thank you to everyone who entered my Giveaway last week! I enjoyed reading all 37 comments! :-)

And the winner is ...............

Comment #16, Tau - Congratulations Valerie!

I've contacted the winner and will have the prize mailed out early next week.

This Giveaway week was so much fun again and I'm looking forward to the next one in December!

Westie & Scottie Christmas Tree Skirt

This is another post in the series catching up on 2012 projects!

First, a little bit of a flashback:

I don't remember the original fiber inspiration for this felt tree skirt, made sometime around 1998 when Wyndi, our first Westie girl, was still with us. I also can't remember which came first, the Westie Christmas tree or the tree skirt! The pattern for the little white terriers is from a Scottie Shortbread recipe in a Leisure Arts pamphlet and the holly and tree shapes came from one of the 1990's Leisure Arts magazines that showed them as fused appliques on sweatshirts.

This tree skirt was an almost no-sew project: I glued the felt Westies, bought pre-made ribbons from a craft store and glued them onto each terrier, glued buttons and rick rack and only hand sewed the small jingle bells on the trees. The edges were all trimmed with pinking shears.

My Westie tree skirt has help up pretty well, but some of the glued pieces have come off after 10+ years of use and I've been undecided whether to make a totally new tree skirt or stitch the loose pieces back on....

Late last summer, a Facebook friend happened to find the online photo of my Westie Christmas tree skirt and asked if I could be persuaded to make one for her. I agreed, but put off working on it until after the Adorno Country Fair in October.

I was juggling a few other projects in late October and had gathered all the supplies for the tree skirt, planning to work on it just before Halloween. And then Hurricane Sandy happened and left us without power for 5 days. Luckily, we didn't have any major damage, and as soon as we were back to normal with power and household needs, I got to work on the Christmas tree skirt.

I didn't think to take photos along the way, so I can only describe in words how to make this tree skirt. The photos shown below were all taken after the skirt was complete and if the colors in some of them look weird it's because red gives me fits when I try to photograph it! I used premium craft felt for the skirt and all the shapes.

Step 1: Using a disappearing ink pen, I traced circles for cutting the outer edges, center hole and placement of the rick rack. To create the circles, I made an impromptu compass by sticking a thumb tack through an old measuring tape into the center of the felt (with a scrap piece of mat board underneath to hold the tack and protect my table). Then slipped the tip of the pen through the eyelet hole at the end of the measuring tape to trace the circles.

Step 2: I glued the rick rack along the marked lines with Aleene's glue and let it dry completely.

Step 3: While the glue dried, I cut the felt applique shapes.

• The black and white terriers were cut out by hand. I scanned and printed several copies of the pattern on paper first, then sprayed the back of each paper pattern with temporary adhesive spray to keep it steady on the felt while cutting with scissors.

• I decided to machine embroider the holly and tree applique shapes, so these were made by stitching the dielines from the embroidery designs onto felt and cutting them out with scissors. The embroidery designs I used are from Embroidery Library's Christmas Heirloom Applique pack.

Step 4: The felt applique pieces were arranged around the felt skirt until I was pleased with the design, then I marked the placement for each with either pins, disappearing ink or chalk marker.

Step 5: Machine embroidered the Christmas trees and holly and berry embroidery designs. I hooped medium weight tearaway stabilizer and used temporary adhesive spray and a few pins to keep the felt skirt on the hoop, then embroidered with rayon embroidery thread.

Step 6: Using the sewing machine and a blanket stitch, I appliqued the terriers in matching rayon embroidery thread in the needle and regular sewing thread in the bobbin.

Step 7: Added the details: the bows were hand tied and hand stitched in place on each terrier's neck and jingle bells were hand stitched at the top of the Christmas trees

Step 8: I added a backing piece of felt to hide the back of the embroidery and sewing. Using the dual feed foot, I sewed a straight stitch along all edges, and sandwiched grosgrain ribbon ties along the opening to keep the skirt closed

Step 9: For the final finishing step, I cut around the edge with a scalloped rotary cutter to give it a nice wavy edge. I like the way it repeats the look of the rick rack.

Overall I was very pleased with the finished Christmas tree skirt! I'm not sure I'd have time to make more for my shop, but if I do, the overall design will have to have fewer terriers. And the backing will probably be a cotton fabric print so the skirt isn't quite as bulky. And probably a few other changes ...