Quilting vs Slipcovers

Do you know what happens when you put your house on the market? It means that there is no way that you can possibly sew because you must keep you're house as neat as pin. Secondly, when you finally sell, you're scrambling to pack everything or get it ready for the movers. And then I watch as they wrap up my very dear to me sewing cabinet and TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN! I almost screamed. No, the sewing machine was not inside, but still, there were some notions stored in there. Aargh.

But I don't really want to talk about the move. It really went mostly smoothly. It just takes forever to find stuff again - I don't care how carefully I think I marked it. And I thought I my first project would be, of course, a quilting one, but no it's something completely different.

Our living room furniture is looking a bit haggard, lots actually. Yet we like it. It's comfy. New stuff is expensive and we're retired now. So I found a great website while searching out how to make slipcovers, www.newtoto,com, which I recommend greatly for upholstery-type fabric. Great prices and they offer free swatches.


I had a book on how to do this, but it is not really clear. I'm going to try to do the chair first, and I'll document my progress here. You may see me crying - I'm a quilter remember. Here goes: First order of business ordered 10 yards of fabric and then went to local fabric shop for rest of supplies - 10 yds. of cording for welting, 2 yds. of zipper chain and stop sets, and thread. I already had pins. Shocking what it takes just for the chair. And, yes, the fabric cost was low enough, under $10/yd! I said it was good.

1. First order of business, make the welting. Gulp, gotta cut into this fabric and make 10 yards of bias. Book wants me to cut individual strips, but I would rather do it the quilting way with continuous bias strips. I'm a renegade already.

 

Tigger thinks he's a big help in holding down the fabric.

 

Cutting those strips took forever. But I'd rather have 10 yards continuous bias than have to sew together lots of little strips. The quilter way was the way to do it.

This is my pile of cord (tiny isn't it?), and fabric. All I have to do is sew them together. It's a matter of getting my brain and fingers to work together and praying that my machine and the thread will work for that amount of time too. I have a good machine (fingers crossed that nothing awful has happened to it in the move - this is the shake down cruise so to speak), and the thread is brand new. Let's go.

This is what it looks like without my fingers getting in the way. Use a zipper foot to get close to the cording. Not too difficult, just need to get into a rhythm.

 Machine held out and so did I! Only had to wind one bobbin too, major miracle. Nice pile of welting to use on the chair. Close- up is below.

I even have extra bias strip if I need to make more welting, but I will need to buy more cording. First major hurdle completed.  Now on to the cushion. Wonder if I'll use my quilting powers there too?