How to Iron Your Sofa

First I must say that I slacked last weekend by running off to Arkansas. The people talk funny and most of them seem kinda slow, but they have more than their fair share of gorgeous camping opportunities. After four(ish) hours of driving and miles and miles of this 

Oh and a few (hundred) of these 

we arrived here:

Anyway back to ironing the sofa...again. I was so excited when I got my foam home that I wrestled it into the cover without ironing it. This was a mistake. I realized at this point that it should probably be washed in super hot water to snug it up.... because I ran out of cushion wrap :( So the next best thing is a super hot iron with steam. can I just say that I tested my irons water spray range and it clears a good 9 feet. Back to business.

looking better!

So. More cushion wrap it'll have to be. I need to put the right front arm on and more piping here and there and she's done. Then I get to make a million throw pillows. I've been looking into this

http://www.lilblueboo.com/2011/09/a-citrasolv-transfer-onto-fabric-a-tutorial.html

so I can make stuff like this

with all the cool graphics like these

Most of which were found here.

http://www.graphicsfairy-diy.com/

Camel Back Sofa

I've been kicking myself for buying this sofa....couldn't figure out what fabric to put on it... whine. bitch. moan. Then I saw this:

Go ahead, wipe the drool off your keyboard.

I decided to be one of the cool kids. One trip to Home Depot and $40 later I had my fabric. Canvas drop cloth (think about all that fabric, roughly 13 yards.... for 40 bucks!) So here she is sans fabric. I forgot to get pictures of before I had all that batting on there but.. well you know. I wish I'd gotten a pic of the roll of dacron too, I swear it was easily 4 feet across. Even smooshed up it hardly fit in the back of my car!

Padded out and ready to go!

I bleached the drop cloth for 4-5 hours. It didn't lighten up much, but after being washed it turned out to be fairly soft an nice smelling :) Also very wrinkled. I thought "Why iron all this fabric when I'll be pulling it really tight?" I found another blogger who seconded this theory of non ironing laziness. I was wrong on this and though I can't say I've ever ironed a couch before, it went really well. No really. 

I still need to make the cushion (just one cushion) and put the back piece on. Oh and the front of the arms. Then I'll make a boat load of pillows for it and...

Stenciled sofa pillows inspired a new pintrest board. http://pinterest.com/rabid_glow/sofa-pillow-ideas/

I love the "grain sack" throw pillows, but I can't stand that you can find these things everywhere, even hobby lobby. So I'm kicking around some other things. I love mattress ticking and old architecture and history and texture..... I'm trying to figure out a good mash of these things. Something that represents my interests without being gaudy or heaven forbid, clashing. Please feel free to pin onto that board!

Penny

Nasty porch chair has been renamed Penny.... because of the ridiculous amount of change I found taking her apart. Somewhere around two dollars. Go me! Anyway...

Today I called around to get some quotes on having the webbing redone and the springs retied on the the old girl. most of the shops around here don't do "partial jobs". Don't they want my money? One shop said they would do it, but wouldn't give me a ballpark estimate. A woman from craigslist quoted me 50 bucks plus materials. Which is when I decided hell, I can tie a knot how hard can this be? We shall see. Ha. I think all I need is youtube and some blog stalking. Wish me luck!

The point where I almost freaked out

The picture doesn't show the inch of disintegrated  burlap dust very well. yuck.

Winging it

Gee I crack myself up. 

 

This piece should have been straight. I'm not really sure what happened here... maybe little elves came in at night and re-cut some of my pieces while I slept? I'll go with that. 

Almost there.

Any good tips for keeping the cats away from my almost finished chair? The little grey devil has already marked up the fabric. Not happy. Gee boyfriend, I have no idea what happened to your (evil)cats, they must have gotten out. What a shame, now I can stop living in an allergy induced miserable hell.... these slippers? they're not new. Yes they've always had tails...  

Step cats- at least they're cute.

Any way... I'm not bitter.

Slowly but Surely

I think that somewhere over the last week or so I had forgotten that this *was* a chair.  By some freakish turn of events I had today (a weekday) off, which means I could finally get to the upholstery supply shop. Let me tell you, that side of town.... kinda scary... BUT every single employee there was soooo helpful. Like freakishly, where the hell did you come from-awesomely helpful. They had a button machine set up for customers. They even showed me how to operate the contraption! So. I went for fabric covered buttons over metal because, well that's what they had and I'm tired of waiting.  

In all her half finish glory.

Unfortunately the electric staple gun I picked up isn't cutting the mustard, if you know what I mean. 

Meet my new friend

Thank you Harbor Freight! I love you and your stupid cheap tools. In other news (if you could call it that) I bought another chair. I know, I know, I've already slapped my own hand for that one, but look!!

I love me some shapely legs!

You should be glad I don't have pictures of the rest of the chair, it is soooo gross/dirty. As in I refuse to bring this monster in until it's been stripped. It will definitely need to be taken down to the frame and be completely rebuilt. If you look closely at the top picture you can see the bottom getting ready to fall out. More tomorrow!

Wing Back Chair Progress

I pulled the trigger today and bought fabric for my reupholstery project. It's a chocolate brown cotton blend with   

a burlap texture. Super score at $7 a yard! It's darker in person.   

 

 I also went to the next best shop to the fabric store, Home Depot. Woot. Except they don't rent wimpy pneumatic staple guns for wimpy upholstery projects. In fact they don't rent any staple guns that shoot anything smaller than 7/8ths of an inch. So. I'm going to have to figure out a deal with my hand held staple gun, which doesn't seem to be cutting it. Sigh. Aside from that I picked up a stain for the legs and happily (not) spent my afternoon sanding the legs. I'm sure you're uber jealous by now. The scheme is coffee bean brown fabric, "ebony stain (because they didn't have espresso, I must be tired... need caffeine...) and I'm thinking antiqued brass buttons and decorative nails in the arms. I've got all the pieces cut... except the 3 (little ones... and the piping)  that I found hiding during clean up.  Hopefully I'll have this *expletive* done next weekend.