What I have been up to - a slipcover

So I have this chair.  I have had it for a long time. The cat has DESTROYED it. 

Here he is, lounging around like he owns the thing...

 Soo... I thought I would make a slip cover for it.

I love all the drop cloth slipcovers that I have seen around blogland, and being the ambitious person I am, despite my lack of sewing skillz and patience, decided to tackle the project of making a custom slipcover for this chair.



I used Miss Mustard Seed's video tutorial series to complete this project.  Her videos are great - super detailed and easy to follow. 

 I had to push the chair around my apartment to find enough light to take the pictures... silly me.

The hardest part was joining all the fabric around the wings - well, just generally joining all the thick fabric pieces together.  My machine didn't want to sew through all of it, so I had to darn a few places by hand (this also helped to keep all the fabric connected when transferring it from the chair to the machine - my pins wanted to fall out a lot!). There are still a few holes here and there that I will probably never fix because they don't bother me enough (lazy me).

I also wish I took Miss Mustard Seed's advice on putting a separate piece of fabric around the front of the chair.  To me, this just seemed like more sewing, so I just made the bottom of the chair all one piece, from the back of the cushion to the ruffles, and wrapped it around the sides to meet the side panel.  Not good - as you can see I have all sorts of puckering going on around the arms.  Furthermore, I am not sure I allowed enough give in the seat area.  When you sit down in the chair, it sort of stretches the fabric out because there isn't enough there to allow for the cushion to sink in.  Ooops.

I plan on making a matching slip cover for my futon, and another pillowcase to match the one on the chair... The pillow is made from old sweaters that I had shrunk at one point or another.  I saved them with the intention of using the fabric, and then I saw Dottie Angel's 4th day of Joyfulness.  She has posted a super simple tutorial on how to make an envelope back pillowcase with multiple pieces of fabric.

Busy busy...

Linking up at MMS and Primp!