Upholstery

I think I want to be an upholsterer. OK, maybe not really, but I am completely intrigued. This grad school thing is really cramping my creative muscles. I picked up a nice straight-back chair at an estate sale for $10. (They were asking $30, but I'm good...and it was the end of the day.)

It's the one on the left

It had OK fabric covering the box cushion (light blue, scalloped, stained), but I thought this would be a perfect time to test out my reupholstering mettle. It took me hours and hours (8+) of sewing. Well, that's not true, it took me hours of staring and measuring and staring and measuring and then finally a little sewing. There were lots of firsts. I cut my first bias strips to make my first piping/cording. I put in stripes/panels (they are straight and centered!). I sewed in piping/cording in for the first time. I've never done any kind of upholstery, and even though this is lightweight, I'm really proud of what I ended up with:

Looks pretty good...

...except it doesn't fit!!!

Arrrrrrrrrrrg.

I didn't see that I needed to ease the fabric on the side panels because the bottom of the cushion is wider than the top. Actually, it's not a full cushion; there's a piece of plywood on the bottom; the fabric goes over the wood so it doesn't show and then you just staple it to the bottom of the wood. Nice, except the wood is kind of big and, obviously, much less forgiving than foam. I haven't worked on it in about a week, too much work and too frustrating. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do either. I will try to sand down the corners on the front just a little bit. If that doesn't help, I will have to do some serious un-sewing. I'll have to take out most of the side fabric, ease it at the corners and re-sew it. Totally doable, totally time-consuming. When it's not way too tight, I have to then add piping to the bottom and staple. That won't be too hard. I can see the light at the end of this treacherous path, but with my workload as it is...it may be another 2 weeks before I can mess with it further.