Yesterday I showed your Laura’s delightful shop and talked about the paint class I took with her.  Today lets talk about the slip covered bench I made for her!  Well, I made the slip covers, the bench was already made. 😀

This is the bench she wanted covered.  She has a spot for it in her house that is gonna be so cute when they get the makeover of the area completed.  It will be a spot to take off or put on your shoes/boots before you head out into the outdoors.  Pretty simple to give this piece a facelift in the form of a slip cover.

I started by tearing the fabric into pieces that would work for each section.

Laura enjoyed taking pics of me on the job!

Laura has it figured out when it comes to using slip covers – you have two for each piece of furniture and when one goes into the wash you put the other on.  Then when the one getting washed is all clean and sparkly you store it away till the next wash time!  this grey print is the second fabric – I went ahead and tore my main pieces in both fabrics before sewing.

For this one I thought the pattern needed to go up and down instead of sideways across the seat back.  Since that was the width of the fabric and it wasn’t wide enough to fit the seat I cut 3 panels and sewed them together to get the direction of pattern in the fabric I wanted.  I used 3 panels because the aesthetics are better with 3 than 2.

The first seam I sew is usually the back piece to the seat back piece.

I pin the pieces together right on the furniture piece – right sides together – and I pin right where I want the seam to be.  I take the pins out as I sew and the seam ends up right along the line where the pins were.

This seam is the most tricky.  I just work with it till I get it pinned as good as I can and hope it works!  I always turn the cover to the right side and try it on the piece like it will be finished before I trim and finish the seams.

I didn’t take my sewing machine with me – it’s a bit hard on machines to be carted around, and Laura said her sis-in-law had one I could borrow.  It worked great for me!

I did take my serger along so I could finish the edges.  My serger has been around for years and has finished more edges than any machine should be asked to.  So I wasn’t worried about the trip being too hard on it.  It did a fine job for me except for the last seam on the white cover.  It would not go through all the thicknesses I had so I had to leave that seam unfinished.  I was not pleased with that but it’s the way it had to be.

Here I am sewing in Laura’s lovely shop!  She fondly calls it ‘The Nest’, short for The Ironstone Nest.  I love it and I’d give a lot to have  space just like it all my own!

And here is the main cover all finished except for adding the ruffle which totally made it a fun, sassy slip cover!

The fabric was a pure white cotton duck cloth which wears so well and looks SO nice!  I doubled the ruffle so there wouldn’t be a hem at the bottom of it, which made for the extra thickness that my serger didn’t like.  I also couldn’t get a gathering thread to draw up gathers (thankfully I though of that and tried a small section before I ran gathering threads through the whole thing and then found out ) so I sewed the ruffle on by creating the gathers by hand as I went.  Not hard but took a bit of time.

Towards the end of the day I managed to knock the box of pins on the floor.  Laura picked them all up for me – she truly is a sweetheart!  And I promise I really didn’t do it on purpose just to give her something to do!!!

I love a good ruffle!

And the grey – we didn’t do a ruffle on this one, just a wide flat band around the bottom to finish it off.

And here is just a bit more of the awesomeness of Laura’s shop.

Isn’t the vintage utensil a great way to display old letters or cards?

And here is the quick pic Emma snapped of Laura and I the next morning right before we left with our kids and she headed off to take her girls to school.

We headed to the capital – Madison – for a few days with the girls.  First stop – the Capitol!

Jill

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