Wednesday, August 5, 2009

A Cushy Job Done!

I love my kitchen chairs. My husband says that they are uncomfortable. The compromise is "the cushions". I found some really nice fabric on clearance at Joann Fabrics. It was on a holiday Sunday and it was 50% off the reduced price. So it was $2.50 a yard. I bought all that they had of three coordinating prints. One print was kind of a Mexican oilcloth print. The one with fruit, not the one with the flowers. The second print was a smaller version of the fruit, outlined in red rickrack squares. The third print was a kind of rickrack plaid. I wasn't that crazy about the plaid, but you can always use the coordinating fabrics in areas that you can't see, so you can save the fabric you like. I thought that I could use the plaid for the reverse side of the cushion. Nobody would see it anyway. Well, I made a pattern of the round seat and cut The outlined fabric so that the center of the seat would be an intersection of the rickrack border. I thought that I would put a button in the center to give it a neater look. I wanted to make it a puffier, more comfortable cushion and raise the chair height just a little bit. I bought buttons to cover for the side I liked and some some primary colored, four hole, plastic buttons for the side I didn't. My plan was to use a different color button for each chair. I didn't know if I wanted to make a piped edge or a rickrack edge. The cushion just looked too busy piped with either of the two fabrics and I didn't want to waste the third fabric making wide bias
tape, so I decided to use red rickrack. The only
problem with that is that the rickrack I could buy

by the yard was too small or too large. I needed
six yards, and the package of rickrack in the
correct size was a running 2
1/2 yards. Because
I needed 54 inches running for each cushion,
I had to buy four packages.
I covered the buttons with only the apples from the fruit print.
Instead of sandwiching the trim between the the two sides of fabric, I sewed it on the plaid side after the construction and stuffing. So that on the fruit side it showed just as a border and on the plaid side it showed as a larger rickrack trim, mirroring the red rickrack in the plaid.

It was a lucky break that I had an upholstery needle to sew the buttons on, because I don't think that I would have been able to tighten them enough without one.
Another thing that I have discovered is there is such a thing as CHEAP safety pins. I wanted to fasten the cushions to the chairs with ties. I remembered from my childhood sewing classes that you could sew strips of fabric outside in and turn them inside out to hide the seams. This is done by attaching a safety pin to one end and sliding it through the strip, pulling the strip through itself. Great idea, always worked when I did it before. Not this time! First the fabric
frayed and then the pin broke, so it didn't slide through. I went looking in my old trusty button box for a "vintage" safety pin. No luck, but I did find my handy dandy bias tape folder! It is a great little machine! You just feed the strip of fabric through and then iron. I didn't cut the strips on the bias, but it worked like a charm. Et Voila! I made the tape, folded it in half and sewed it
together.
All in all it was a satisfying project. My kitchen looks cuter. My husband is sitting pretty. I found that thing out about safety pins.
And we are all happy campers. I'm about to get started on my next project...what will it be? Can I top this? Probably!

Here are the cushions on the chairs ready for approval...Do you approve?











No comments:

Post a Comment