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Yesterday I suddenly and completely could not stand my skanky old office chair for one more minute.  This is a chair that I’ve had for about ten years and it was a freebie from Rick’s old work place.  It has been very serviceable and is pretty comfortable but the fabric was starting to show its age as well as being blue which is not a color I decorate with.

It also had an unfortunate potty training incident a few weeks ago that spot cleaning and baking soda didn’t seem to help.

I had a couple of yards of a white ribbed knit fabric I bought a few years ago when I got a  notion to recover my outdoor seat cushions (yeah – that never happened) and I thought the stretchy-ness of the fabric would lend itself to an office chair overhaul.

I was not going for a perfect job here.  I just wanted to give it a fresh look.  This is another one of those projects where if you look too closely you will see all the rough edges.

I started off by cutting a rectangle slightly larger than the seat. I flipped the chair over and stapled it in place, stretching the fabric to pull it tight.  I trimmed the excess fabric close to the staples and flipped the chair back over.  Seat cover done.  Next was to tackle the seat back.   I traced the outline of the seat back and cut two pieces (a rounded off square of sorts) and sewed the two pieces together leaving an opening at the bottom so I could slip it over the back.  I then flipped the chair upside down and stitched the opening closed.  The entire project took about 30 minutes.

At some point I would like to get a prettier chair but this is perfectly serviceable for the time being.

For the most part I like my office set up.  Here is an office tour post I did a year an half ago so you can see the layout of the room.  It serves a lot of purposes therefore there is a lot of furniture in the room.   I’m feeling the itch to rearrange things so I’ve been looking and pinning pictures of other office/creative spaces to get inspiration.  Here are a few that are inspiring me:

source unknown

 

@lebenslustiger

 

The Sunday Chapter

 

Recently the Blog

 

@margo.hupert.art

I spend a lot of time in my office so it naturally begins to reflect the true me – not just how I want it to appear (or be decorated) which I think is the best way to decorate anyway.  I honestly wouldn’t change too much…maybe a new chair and new desk top.

It’s fun to look at pictures and dream though, isn’t it?

Alternate title:  How to completely fail at a super simple project.

This was an exercise in frustration.  A few months back I pinned a table runner that I thought would look great on my Dad’s dining room table.  His house is decorated in shades of white, greys and blues and he has a huge table that can fit up to 20 comfortably when the ends are extended.  Since finding long enough table cloths is problematic  I wanted to make a nice big table runner for it using the picture as inspiration.

I started picking up scraps of cream and grey fabric, which aren’t that easy to find.  I was doing a search on Etsy and came across a charm pack of the Moda Modern Backgrounds More Paper fabric line and the colors were perfect.  I ended up using about 32 of the charm squares and supplemented with the other fabrics I had picked up.  I just love that little bee print and the ditsy white flowers on the grey background.

The finished runner measures 21″ x 74″.  I used 5  charm squares for the short ends and 16 for the long sides.  The center fabric is Outer Space from the Thrive fabric collection from Moda.  I thought it was a good homage to the Shashiko design of the inspiration piece.

Slight segue but isn’t that bobbin holder adorable?  I found it at an antique shop a few years ago.  I think it even came with a few bobbins of thread.  I love the starburst on the top.

First I sewed the squares for the long side together and then did the short sides.  So far so good.  Then I calculated the size my center fabric needed to be.  My first issue was my ruler slipped while I was cutting it so it wasn’t a perfect straight edge.  I had to be aware of this as I was sewing.  How do you experienced sew-ers cut large pieces of fabric when you want the edges to be really straight and precise?  The largest mat I have is 21″ x 24″.  The longest ruler I have is 24″.  I ended up folding the piece and cutting through multiple layers which is where I ran into the problem of the ruler slipping.  So the mistake wasn’t in just one small section, it was repeated in four places.

I then painstakingly pinned my first long strip to the center fabric and sewed it carefully, being mindful of my wonky edges.

And I somehow managed to sew the wrong side of the long strip to the right side of the center fabric.   I think I spent more time seam ripping than sewing.

I sorted it out and got the four strips sewn to my center piece.  No matter how carefully I sewed my pieces together, using a 1/4″ seam allowance, the strips wouldn’t line up properly.  How is that possible?

I used the same fabric for the backing as I used in the center.  And I managed to cut it about 3/4″ too short.

At this point I was ready to chuck the whole thing in the trash in a fit of pique but I soldiered on.  Like the inspiration picture, I didn’t want to have a binding so I sewed the two pieces, wrong side together (with some thin batting) and then turned it right side out.  I finished it with some top stitching along the edges.  I was intending to do some more quilting on it but to be honest I was over it by this point.

I’m tempted to cut all the edges off and redo it with by narrowing the side rows to be consistent with the ends and adding a binding.   We’ll see how much effort I want to invest it in.  I think the overall pattern is a keeper, I just need to figure out how to keep my seams consistent and to cut things out properly.