Hey y'all!
I hope your week is off to a good start! Today I want to share my most recent project with you. I found this Chinese Chippendale footstool at an antique shop near Pinehurst, North Carolina while visiting my aunt in the fall of 2013. I think it was around $35, and at first I wasn't going to purchase it... I was a broke college student! After calculating how many nights I would have to eat Ramen for dinner (kidding, kind of), I took the plunge. The details on this little stool were too cute to pass up!
Check out that detail!
At the time I bought it, it was pained white and upholstered with a red and white wavy striped fabric. I hated the red and white, so I painted it glossy black and recovered it with a black and white toile fabric. Thinking the cushion was too flat, I overstuffed it with a ton of fiberfill. Later on, I regretted overstuffing it. It just looked a little out of place! However, it looked so much better (and fluffier) than before, so I ignored it for a while. It has been sitting in the corner of my apartment since I've moved in, and sadly hasn't gotten much use.
How it's been sitting...
After making the curtains that are currently hanging in my living room, I had a little extra beige fabric left over. It was the perfect amount to re-cover the stool! I've had this project on my to-do list for a few weeks, and this weekend I finally completed it.
Of course you want to know how I did it!
I took the cushion off of the stool base with a screwdriver, and ripped the toile fabric from the underside of the cushion. After removing all the fiberfill, I laid the cushion in the middle of my beige fabric and started reupholstering! Take it from me, reupholstering flat cushions is super easy. Using a staple gun you simply staple the straight edges down tightly, then fold the corners over tightly and staple those as well! For some reason, I find this really fun.
The fiberfill is embarrassing!
At this point, I placed the cushion back on the stool and observed my work. Honestly, I could have stopped here. It looked great to me, however I thought it was missing something. Being unsure of what to add, I screwed the cushion on, snapped some pictures, and did a little research.
Not bad, huh?
Enter my newest DIY excursion- piping!
I checked out some piping tutorials online, but was discouraged when almost all articles showed step-by-step DIY piping with a sewing machine. Don't get me wrong, I love sewing projects (I learned how to use a sewing machine in middle school!) but I'm an amateur at best. I hate using patterns and I'm very impatient, so I've never purchased a zipper foot for my machine. I usually try to avoid using zippers or any project that I can't sew up by hand (like all of my pillows).
SO, I was sold when I read a blog explaining how to make your own piping without a zipper foot. How, might you ask? A hot glue gun! This was a sign- super easy, cheap, and fast... my kind of project!
Most websites explaining how to make piping mentioned using cotton cord, which can be found at craft stores. Since I'm pretty lazy, I looked for cord at Walmart when picking up a few miscellaneous items. Of course I couldn't find any, but I did find a $2 clothesline in the laundry section, which was the perfect circumference for my stool's piping. I brought it home and got to work.
I first cut two long strips of my fabric as "on-the-bias" as I could (I repeat, I'm lazy and I like quick results). I hot glued the strips together face to face on one end, making one long strip of fabric. Then, I simply wrapped the fabric around my "cording" and started hot gluing it down tightly. The most annoying part of this was the hot glue strings. Seriously, it was that fast and easy.
My materials...
How the "piping" looks while wrapping it...
After I wrapped all my cording, I came up with one long strip of "piping." I next took the cushion off the base, flipped it over, and started hot gluing my piping around the perimeter. I hot glued the excess fabric, so that the "pipe" part hung off the side of the cushion. When I got to a corner, I cut little triangles in the excess fabric so it would bend easier, and hot glued the piping in a curve.
How it looked when I first started attaching the piping...
My triangles in the curve...
Once I reached the starting end of the cording, I pulled the hot glued fabric apart enough to fold the fabric over and cover my raw cording end (does that make sense)? This part probably took the longest. And by that, I mean "three minutes."
I folded that little top part over!
Ta-da! See all the other old fabric? Ugh!
I quickly screwed the cushion back on, and Voila! My stool is complete!
Up close! Looks legit, right?
I love this fabric because its neutral and matches both my curtains and chairs! I now have it sitting in front of a matching chair, even though the chair has wooden legs and the stool is glossy black! It all blends, right? I think so. Plus, the stool makes the chair much more inviting to sit in. It looks welcoming, instead of stuffy. I sat with my feet up for most of Sunday, checking out my new perspective on my apartment. :)
What do you think of my stool re-do? Are you tired of reading my rambling yet?
Until next time!
-Emmi
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