half way there...

Saturday night I finished the arms and the seat of my slipcover. I feel like I am finally getting some momentum going and hope to have it all finished in a few days!

So here's the progress pics and some tips on the arms and seat for those of you attempting your own slips!

The seam between the arm and the back rest is probably the hardest part of a slipcover for me. I find it very hard to pin in those deep crevices.

I don't have any great tips as I am still experimenting and learning how to do this. But I like to drape my fabric over the arm and then push the two pieces of fabric that will be meeting into the crevice.

Then I sort of pinch the fabric in the crevice and then pull it out (so I can see what I am doing) and pin it. To double check I push it back in the crevice to see if the pin is in the right place.

I usually reposition each of the pins for this seam about 5 times before I decide it's not getting any better. I hope I'm not the only one!

The easier part (for me anyway) is when you are not having to reach inside a crevice to pin. I like when you can just follow the lines of your couch with the pins like in the picture below, with the back portion of the arm.

Here is the side of one finished arm.

Here is the view from the back

Now that I have the arms, I can start adding the seat.

This is a straight line so it would be super easy to pin if it weren't for that darn seat crevice. So I decided to pin a little above the crevice. I'm a rebel like that. Plus, I figure the cushions are going to be covering it so it doesn't really matter if my seam isn't exactly in the right place. Oh, and because I hate pinning in a crevice. Have I mentioned that?

Ta-Da!

Now I just have to put on  the front of the arms (with piping), the skirt and cover the cushions! Shouldn't be too much longer!

If you have questions, let me know. I'll try to help the best I can!

slowly, but surely

Projects take a little bit longer when you have a toddler at home. If I could just have one uninterrupted day I could finish this slipcover pretty quickly, but with a toddler it's more like one hour here and one hour there, wherever I can fit it in during naptimes and after he goes to bed in the evenings.

So I appreciate your patience, while I finish this project a little bit at a time.

So after I finally finished cutting all my pieces and washing everything*, I started working on the back of the slip. For some reason, I didn't take a picture of the entire back piece, but here are the details for those of you who want to know. I cut two pieces for my back and they overlap by about 1-1/2 inches in the middle. I hemmed the sides that overlap so they have a finished edge and I plan on sewing on ribbon to each piece so I can tie my slipcover in the back. This is what I did on my chair and it turned out to be my favorite part!

*just a note on cutting pieces and then washing. My small pieces did fine, but my largest pieces had A LOT of shrinkage. The seat had so much shrinkage that it was no longer big enough no matter how I tried to make it work. So I just want to warn you. If you try this route, you should make your cuts generously!

OK, moving on. After the back pieces were ready, it's time to sew the back to the "back rest". I don't really know what the correct term is for this part, but it's the front side of the back (the place where your back rests) so that is what I will call it!

Straight lines like this are easy. You just get your pieces where you want them and then pin along the line of the couch.

{Always make sure you are working with your fabric inside out, meaning the "right" side of your fabric is facing the couch when you are pinning.}

Once you're all pinned, it's time to sew! This is the most fabric I have ever worked with and it's a little difficult to manover it all around while sewing. I do really like this duck canvas though. It's a great weight and doesn't bunch up while your sewing like some lighter weight fabrics tend to do.

Next was the sides of the back rest. Originally my plan was to have the back rest all one pieces, extending all the way around to these sides. But I played with my fabric for a long time and could not get it to work. It was going to be too much fabric bunched around those corners. So I chose to use seperate pieces for the sides.

You can see below how I pinned the two pieces  together. If you are a beginner sewer like me, curves are the most difficult. So take your time and stop every few inches to make sure your fabric isn't bunching up underneath your presser foot. Also when you are pinning it helps to use a lot of pins and pin close together. This will help you follow the curves better. I always use my blue fabric marker for the curves too. I just draw a little arch and it help me know exactly where to sew when I get to the curved part.

Below is one side after I finished sewing. I'm pretty happy with it and I am actually glad now that I went with a seperate piece for the side. Of course, I repeated these steps for the other side as well.


Next is sewing on the arms. I'll be back with progress pics and details as soon as I finish that part!

Thanks for following along on my slipcovering adventure!

let the slipcovering begin!

I've never worked with a piece of fabric this large before. It took me forever just to unwrap it from the bolt!

So rule number one is always wash your fabric first. You wouldn't want your slipcover skrinking once you had already sewed it together! When I slipcovered my chair I just estimated and cut my 10 yards of fabric into several big chunks that would fit in my washing machine. Afterwards, I wasn't  really happy with the result. I felt like it was an inefficient use of my fabric and I had a lot of waste.

So this time I have decided to make all my cuts first (leaving room for a little shrinkage, of course) and then wash it.

First I cut about and 1 to 1-1/2 inches of the entire length of my fabric. This strip will be for my piping.

I really didn't want to measure and mark 1-1/2" for the whole 15 yard strip. So I just "eyeballed" it as I went. You can see in the picture below that every couple of feet I would hold up the beginning of my fabric strip to the piece I was cutting to make sure I was still cutting the right width.

Have you ever tried to take a picture with your left hand while you are cutting with scissors in your right hand? It's not as easy as it looks.



Then I did the same for my skirt, except it was about an 8" wide strip. I plan on cutting the rest of my pieces with pinking shears (I just bought a pair yesterday). That should help cut down on the fraying when I wash my pieces.

All this cutting got me excited for this project so I decided to go ahead and pin my skirt on the couch just to get an idea of how it was going to look.

I'm going to do a box pleat on each corner of my skirt. I am so excited to see how this comes together.



It's going to be sooo much better than the current, ugly, brownish couch!

Hope you all are having a wonderful Memorial Day!

More slipcover progress coming soon.....

It's here!

Busy day, but I had to give you a little update. 15 yards of cotton duck has just arrived at my door.

So the slipcover adventures will be beginning this week! I'm a little nervous, but it should be fun!

Anyone else ever slipped a large couch?

I might be crazy....

Last night at 11:30 pm (I must have been delirious) I ordered 15 yards of white cotton duck

(great picture, I know)

to make a slipcover for this hideous thing

What have I gotten myself into?!