FRIDAY FINDS

It is a gorgeous day in Wisconsin. The sun is shining, the high temperature may break a record and I have completely mixed feelings about that. Don't get me wrong, I love an easy winter. But I love it during winter. There are consequences though. Last year I had Japanese beetles in my garden for the first time ever, probably caused by a mild winter and spring. Plants can handle a pretty wide range of temperature fluctuations, but extended periods of weather in the 50s in mid-February in what is supposed to be zone 5 can cause problems. And I worry about the broader implications that go beyond my garden.

As part of the basement project, we've been paring down our STUFF. I recently sold a set of dining chairs that I loved very much but needed some work that I've not had the time to get to for years. We have big dinners a couple times a year so we need chairs, but these were huge and unwieldy to store. I'm on the hunt for comfortable folding or stackable chairs at a good price to replace the set we just sold, so if time allows I'm going to head to the Restoration Hardware outlet where everything is an additional 40% off this weekend and see if they have something that might fit the bill. I was thinking about these cafe-type chairs, but only if they can be stacked.

Loi's Tudor house is for sale. What a dream this house would be if you wanted a place that was completely finished and ready to just move in and live.

Erin at Floret is running a series on garden planning this week. She approaches it from the flower farm perspective but her method can certainly be scaled back to apply to home gardeners. Her first book is coming out in a couple weeks and I'll be doing a review of it, so stay tuned.

I wouldn't say there's much that's earth-shattering in this list of ways to design a beautiful edible garden, but those oak wine barrels are phenomenal.

The latest Anthropologie catalog was shot at the Gianetti's Patina Farm. It's crazy because I saw the catalog and the setting was vaguely familiar but I didn't recognize their house at all with such different furnishings in it. I gotta say ... I like the "real" way better.

And lastly, I had intended to get this how-to post up this week but ran short on time so next week. But I still have to give you a preview because ....

I. MADE. THIS.

Can you tell I'm just a little proud of myself? Tutorial on the way, I promise. Also, that's the new basement wall and ceiling color in that photo too. Just a tad better than raspberry and baby blue, right? Remember how that looked?

Eek ... it's so bad, especially with the pink floors! All we've really done down there so far is paint and do the lights and it's already about 98% better.

If you're craving the sun, be sure to follow me on Instagram as there is certain to be a beach photo or two popping up there next week. I'm headed south for a quick jolt of Vitamin D and a little break from the daily grind. I'm more than a little excited.  Have a great weekend!

Mid-project updates

I know that sometimes it seems like nothing is happening here in Impatient Gardener land. You don't hear from me for a few days (unless you follow me in Facebook or Instagram where I'm much more likely to post regular updates) and you assume I'm probably asleep on the couch with my laptop half on my face. You would be right a lot of the time.

But right now I have a bunch of projects in motion. The problem with projects, I'm finding, is that apparently they can take some time to finish. So instead of waiting what could realistically be months for the finished project (I literally have two big pieces of furniture in the basement that have been 80% finished for going on a year now), I thought I'd show you some of what's going on.

Probably the biggest project I've been working on is the kitchen table. Yep, longtime readers will recall when I did it the first time. I won't get in the why I'm redoing it right now, but suffice to say, something needed to be done.

This is what the table looked like until last Sunday.

Fast forward to this week. This is what the table looks like now (below, and keep in mind that the quality of the photos here is vastly different). I'm getting some positive comments on Facebook but there is work to be done. I'm probably going to take a wire brush to it to scuff it up (after I just got done sanding it by the way) and then use some liming wax. In any case, the final protective finish will be wax. Oh, and I'm repainting the legs too, but just the white that the rest of the kitchen is.

Meanwhile, the basement is full of orange. I don't think I've ever been so into orange before, but here I am with two different shades of orange going on furniture in the basement.

I've been working on redoing these cane chairs I bought two years ago on Craigslist and have gotten to the point where I'm on the last coat of paint, so it was time to double check to make sure I was happy with the color (oranges and reds, in my opinion, take at least three coats if not four to develop to the correct color). I brought one of the chairs up to the room where it's going and draped some of the fabric that I'm recovering the cushions in (yep ... I went for the most overused and expensive fabric you can find on the Internet; I can't help it, I adore it).

The color—Benjamin Moore Starburst Orange—is actually showing up a tad pinker than I expected, but I think once the finish goes gloss, which it is, the color will change a bit.

In other project news, I'm painting another ceiling (funny how I keep doing that even after swearing that I would never do that again). I've also determined that painting the garage is not going to happen this fall. The weather has turned and I don't want to take a chance of the paint job not working. By the way, thank you all for your nice comments on the garage project.

So that's what's happening in my world ... what do you think?

Let's get bold

Slowly but surely the living room transformation from a warm modern French country feel to a more casual, slightly nautical feel has come together.

I showed you the new main seating area (our living room is long and narrow so we have three seating areas). I also showed you how I reupholstered the set of chairs by the game table over near the front door. In between those two areas is the fireplace.

We've had two Pottery Barn Malabar chairs there since we bought the house. PB stopped making those chairs after everyone in the world bought them and there was no one left who didn't own one. I don't care if they are ubiquitous, I still like them and they are one of the few wicker chairs on earth that is actually comfortable.

Here's what the living room has looked like for the last 10 years. 

When I redid the main seating area of the living room I was hoping that the old rug in front of the fireplace would still work, but it quickly became obvious that was not the case. Fortunately I've found a good home for it (I really loved that rug) at my brother and sister-in-law's house. With all of the pattern happening between the striped rug and the navy chair and ottoman I was looking for a rug that was a solid color but with lots of texture to keep it from looking boring. Jute or sisal would be my first thought but our light floors rarely look good with natural fiber rugs. When I found this chunky braided wool rug (at rugsusa.com at a really nice price thanks to a good coupon) I loved that it picked up the off-white from the stripe of the main rug and reminded me a little of a fisherman's sweater.

The chairs before with the great cushion covers my mom made for me, on top of the new braided rug. It just doesn't work.

So the rug was a keeper but then it became obvious that the yellow large-scale floral on the chair cushions wasn't going to work. That made me sad too because my mom made those covers for me out of leftover fabric from her family room couch and I still really like the pattern. Also, as you can imagine, even though I got pretty good deals on almost everything new in the room other than the sofa, the "budget" (I use that word loosely because I never really set an amount to spend on it) for this room was pretty much used up. Fortunately I remembered that I still had the original cotton canvas cushions that came with the chairs.

But off-white canvas on an off-white rug? Boring. So a little cushion sprucing up was called for.

I really liked the racing stripe pillows from Serena and Lily, but at $64 a pop, I wouldn't exactly call that budget-friendly.

Serena and Lily racing stripe pillow

I've painted a few strange things (including speakers and hinges), but I have never been really keen on painting fabric. But I couldn't possibly add another sewing project to my rapidly growing list of things that need to get done when I finally pull the sewing machine back out.

So paint it was. I sampled some fabric paint on a canvas drop cloth (I figured that was close to cotton canvas) but I hated how crispy it was. Plus I was not satisfied with the colors I could find in true fabric paint, so I bought acrylic craft paint that I mixed to a color I liked and fabric medium, which is sort of liquidy white stuff you mix with paint so it stays somewhat pliable on fabric and doesn't crack like a bad 1980s T-shirt.

I marked the center of the pillow and then measured 4.5 inches on either side for a 9-inch stripe. Later on I got smarter and put a piece of tape vertically down the center and drew the centerline on it to make it easier to get the lines straight all the way down.

After washing and air-drying the covers just to make sure they were clear of any kind of coating that might keep the paint from sticking, I used 3M high-adhesion painter's tape and after I figured out how to keep the line straight and centered (the hardest part of the project by far), I used a flat wooden spoon to run over the edge to make sure it was really stuck down. For the most part the line stayed pretty crisp, but there was a little creep under the lines where I couldn't push it down as well, such as where the box cushion covers curved. You can't really see it unless you look very closely.

I mixed together three different colors of blue Martha Stewart craft paint to get a navy I liked, then followed the instructions on the fabric medium and mixed it in 1-to-1 with the paint.

Although I've read about a lot of people rolling paint on fabric, I used a broad cheap artist's brush I picked up in a three-pack at Michael's.

I let everything dry overnight just to be extra safe, then I just followed the directions on the back of the fabric medium bottle and ironed everything at medium for 3 to 5 minutes. To be extra sure that the color was set, I also threw the cushion covers in a hot dryer for about 15 minutes.

When I pulled them out of the dryer they were soft and you couldn't even tell that there was paint on the fabric, but as they cooled they stiffened up a little. If you run your fingers across the pillows you can tell its paint, but it's not an unpleasant crunchiness like I was worried about. And you can't tell at all when you sit in them.

Before

After (P.S. When am I going to learn to pick up the house before I start taking pictures? Yes I iron in the middle of my living room.)

All in all I'm really happy with how they turned out and even more happy that I was able to transform those chair for about $15 in supplies and maybe 90 minutes of work. Everything is looking a little too neutral to me now so I really need to get on my pillow making projects and get some pillows sewn for on those chairs (as well as a few others).

Have you ever painted fabric?

Rug, meet chair. Chair, meet rug.

First off, I'm sorry for the radio silence this week after the big bang of two posts on Monday. I had posts all ready to go and then work got so busy I didn't even have time to hit send.

The other day a friend and blog reader sent me a message in the middle of our intense Words with Friends game asking me how the chair in the living room turned out. She was guessing it wasn't good since I hadn't posted anything about it.

The chair came back a couple weeks ago. First of all, I was thrilled with the reupholstery job. He did a great job matching patterns, which is a big deal to me and I was over the moon happy with my decision to go with the contrast welt. 

The chair at night with lots of lamps on for the icky yellow cast.

The fabric has great texture.

A couple weeks before that, the new living room rug arrived and although it was a little lighter in color than I expected (you never know what you're going to get when you order online), I also loved that. It was bigger than the old rug and that was good because I really felt like the other one was undersized. I picked the rug mostly because I wanted a striped rug but it had to be tufted. I have had nothing but great luck with tufted wool rugs in terms of cleaning and horrible luck with flat-weave rugs. This rug sees a lot of action and a ton of muddy paw prints so a dark color or a busy pattern was a requirement.

In most rooms that have the look I was going for I think a sisal or jute rug would be perfect, but I had two issues with those: 1.) They aren't as cozy as I would like. We lay around with the dogs on the rug and I often sit there and do projects that require a big work space. 2.) The light color of our floors makes it very difficult to work with natural material rugs and I wouldn't take the chance of buying one sight unseen online.

OK, so now we have a rug I love and a chair I love. But guess what? When they met I wasn't convinced it was love at first sight. I knew I was taking a chance by ordering the rug before I had the chair or vice versa, but my thinking on this room all along has been that all blues (except for those on the extreme ends of blue that are more like purple or teal) get along, so I wasn't worried if the blues didn't match. What I didn't expect was to have a problem with the pattern.

So I lived with the combo for a few days. After a little stewing, I realized I do like it. I think I was in a bit of shock because it was a pretty dramatic change from before and because I'm not a big pattern person. I tend to hide in the safety of solid colors with texture. 

Interestingly, when I showed her a picture, my WWF opponent/friend/blog reader said the same thing I had been thinking, "It's a lot of look." Thank you Tim Gunn for giving us that phrase. And it is a lot of look, but I think with a few small details it will be a lot of good look.

So that's why you haven't seen the room yet. Because I had to make sure I liked it before I'd show it to you. It still needs a little work. I need a little side table for the chair (I'd love to find a small marble-topped table with simple lines). I still need to make some more pillows—one or two more for the couch plus one for the chair, which I think needs to be simple in design and color palette and maybe incorporate some of the burnt orange color in the pillow on the couch and the painting in the corner. I also need to get some art on the wall in the corner by the white lamp to balance things out. As we know, though, art comes slowly to my house.

Putting the afghan on the ottoman also helped break things up too. I use that afghan every night so it's always handy so it works out to have it there anyway.

And lastly, the other rug in front of the fireplace is about to be replaced and find a new home. It is a lovely rug so I'm happy I have found it a good home, but it just doesn't work in the room anymore. So avert your eyes from that rug. 

One nice thing about having the story-and-a-half house is that it's nice to get the overall view from upstairs. I'm not sure what to tell you about the blues in these photos. The rug looks positively royal blue in them and that's really not the case. I'd say more cadet blue or lighter navy (more like you see in the shaded parts of the rug). 

So there it is. Do me favor and don't tell me if you hate it.

Have a great weekend everyone. I've got an itch to do a little painting so who knows what I'll have to show you next week!

NOT GOODBYE, JUST UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

The mustard yellow chair and ottoman in the living room went away Monday morning. They are off to get a new look at a local upholsterer.

Yeah, I should probably vacuum before I take pictures.

The ottoman (and more dog fur). You can see the fabric swatch on the X-bench in the background.

I love that chair and, like our sofa, it pretty much has someone sitting in it every night. It is 12 years old and has held up really well and I still love the look of it. We're going an entirely different direction with the fabric for it, and I have to admit, I'm a little nervous. Honestly, I'm a lot nervous. What if it doesn't work with the rug (that is FINALLY coming this week; nothing like waiting since May)? What if I tire of the pattern? 

We're having it recovered in Calico Corners' Twist fabric, which looks a little bit like a chainlink fence in a swatch until you realize it's a very large pattern. It also has a great texture to it and I love textured fabrics. I'm also having contrasting welt put on it in an off-white to match the white in the main fabric. I tried to find a Sunbrella fabric that would work but believe it or not I had no success. So I ended up with a random off-white. I bought all the fabric during Calico Corners' big fall sale so I wouldn't say I got a great deal on it, but it at least brought it down to a realistic price.

Calico Corners Twist Indigo fabric

See how sharp contrast welting can look? (P.S. I should not have done a search for contrast welting ... I have yet to find an example of it on a print and now I'm worried it will be too busy.)

Crate & Barrel chair from a few years ago.

Casasugar photo

Unfortunately the reupholsterer said it will be three to four weeks to finish it. I hope he's the underpromise-and-overdeliver type and he'll be calling me in two weeks to tell me it's finished, but I sort of doubt it. One of the wicker chairs from in front of the fireplace will stand in for the time-being, which may not be a good thing. It was readily apparent last night that the dogs love the idea of having an entire area rug to themselves. They won't be happy when the furniture goes back to its normal locations.

It's nerve wracking to take a design risk, but I rarely do it so I figure it's about time. Committing to a pattern is hard thing to do on anything bigger than a throw pillow and I really don't know how it will turn out. I'm even more worried about the contrast welt, but I love it every time I see it in a photo so it's time to turn that into action. Right? Gosh I hope so.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Here's a bit of randomness for Friday (yay Friday!).

First off, in case you missed it on the Facebook page yesterday, the chair I was (and still am) in love with at the thrift store turns out to be eerily similar to my favorite chair in our house. Like someone said ... you like what you like. Guess we know what I like. And yes, I'm still having to practically tie myself down to keep from going back and getting those chairs.

On the left, the $6 chair from the thrift store. On the right, my favorite (soon to be reuphostered) chair in the living room. Look alike much?

All of a sudden I'm a bit obsessed with vintage stuff. I went to two other thrift stores yesterday. One was a complete fail but the other was quite nice. I've not been to it before but they actually arranged the furniture (and they had a lot of good stuff) into little vignettes which is so much better than the oak graveyard that seems to be so popular at most stores. I found a lamp that looked amazing like this lamp, or would, at least, after it was painted. It was $5 (vs. the $340 price tag on the new one) and I carried it around for half an hour before deciding that it was too large for next to the couch and remaining firm on not buying things I don't have an immediate use for. Look at me and all my willpower!

In addition to scouring the thrift stores, I have been all over Etsy and eBay this week. Just days after whining about how much I detest shopping for lamps, I somehow discovered that I LOVE shopping for vintage lamps. Who knew? These are a few of the lamps I currently have on my watch list on eBay. I'm even finding lights for places I didn't realize I was looking for light fixtures for.

I have no need for sconces, but these are so fabulous that I'm watching them just to see what happens with them.

Lindsey over at Better After featured my chair redo today, except she put in a not-quite-after picture before I put the double welt on. Still, it's always a thrill to have your projects recognized by someone else and Lindsey's commentary is worth the price of admission any day of the week!

All done, WITH the welting.

It is amazing when and how inspiration strikes. I've been half looking for mirrors for the bedroom. This is  not a high priority project, but it's one of those things I always have in the back of my head to keep an eye out for. Suddenly this morning it occurred to me that what I'm looking for is probably simple enough that I could make it on my own. I called the local glass supply store and they can sell me the mirror in the size I need for $15 a pop. If I can find the rest of the parts for a reasonable price I think I'm going to have one crazy cool project on my hands.

And lastly, a gardening note for you. Heather at New House, New Home, New Life posted the very good reminder this morning that it's time to start amaryllis bulbs. I picked up a handful (well a couple handfuls since amaryllis bulbs are pretty big) from the plant co-op that I need to get planted this weekend and get them growing in time for Christmas. So if you're planning on starting some amaryllis (and why wouldn't you?) get yourself in gear this weekend.

Speaking of plants, I love staghorn ferns. I think they are so cool and I really want to grow one. Do any of you grow these? It sounds like they can be pretty particular about humidity which can be hard to manage in winter inside.

Photo from Logee's Greenhouse

Oh and don't forget to enter to win the vintage botanical chart if you haven't already and have a great weekend!

Step away from the chair

I happened to be driving past the local thrift store this weekend and just popped in for a quick run through to make sure I didn't need anything (ha, need, that's funny). Things were pretty well picked over, which seems to be the usual state of things at this particular store as I understand the employees usually grab the best stuff.

I did, however, walk past a pair of the cutest little chairs covered in a peach velour. I love velour. It is a creepy fascination, but I'm positive it goes back to my childhood. My dad had a rust-colored velour shirt (this was the '70s, after all) and I would sit on his lap and rub my face against his shirt. So now I love velour.

Anyway, I sat in one of the chairs and it was remarkably comfortable. The cushion could use a little firming up, but otherwise it was great. And then I pulled up the skirt and saw the cutest fluted legs. And I loved the three-button tufts on the back.

And the best part? They were $6 each. Are you kidding me?

Especially with my newfound love of upholstering, I thought this would be the perfect first fully upholstered chair to take on.

Except there is no possible place in my house for these to live. And I already have an upholstery project in waiting in the basement. And I always fall in with expensive fabric, so even though they only cost $12 for both of them, I could easily see this being a $400 project. And I'm not running a furniture store.

So they had to stay. Even writing about them makes me want to run back there and see if they are still there but I must resist.

Step away from the chair, Erin. Step away.

Darling dots: How to recover a chair

I'm absolutely delighted to be bringing you this tutorial today. I have to say this is one of my favorite projects ever and  I couldn't be more pleased with the results.

This wasn't even a project I had planned, but I fell in love with the fabric and after giving it some thought, I realized that jumping into my first upholstery project on the Craigslist chairs that have been sitting in the basement that I hope to cover with the crazy expensive Chiang Mai Dragon fabric might be ill-advised.

The two little red chairs that sit by the game table in the living room have needed recovering since I got them about nine years ago. My mother-in-law found them in an antique store (although I don't believe they are that old) and thought they were too cute to leave there. We were lucky enough to be the home she chose for them.

They have a lovely lived-in red finish on them. I'm not sure if it's well-worn or a really good paint job, but for maybe the first time in my life, I didn't even consider touching the finish.

There are a lot of upholstery tutorials on the Internet, and I encourage you to read a couple (in addition to this one). This one is quite good and Design Sponge has a whole series of upholstery basics articles that probably cover most beginner projects. The more you read about it, the easier it is, I think. But here's the key thing to know: This is not rocket science. If I can do this, so can you.

Here's what you'll need:
• Something to reupholster, preferably an armchair, bench or something that's not fully upholstered.
• Upholstery fabric
• Stapler. I used, and highly recommend, a pneumatic upholstery stapler that attaches to an air compressor, but an electric or even hand operated stapler will work ... you'll just need a hand transplant afterwards.
• Thin flat-head
• Pliers or small vice grips
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Trim or double welt cording
• Hot glue gun

New favorite power tool.

The important thing to do is to make a lot of mental notes (or better yet, snap photos with your phone) when you take the existing fabric off. Start with any trim, which should pull right off with a few good tugs.

Then find yourself a good movie and sit down in front of the TV because this next bit is really no fun. You want to start pulling out the staples that hold the fabric on. I found it easiest to use the screwdriver to pop it up as much as possible and then use a small vice grips top pry out. If your chair is covered in a really heavy duty fabric like mine was, when you get to a certain point, you can actually pull the fabric to help pop up the staples. Just take care not to rip the fabric because it will serve as your pattern later on.

Old and faded and old and naked.

I labeled the fabric and foam with a marker as I took it off if it wasn't totally obvious as to what part it was from. I also saved the dust cover on the bottom to reuse.

With the chair stripped, I ironed my new fabric and laid out the old fabric on it. I laid everything for both chairs (I bought two yards of fabric) out first to make sure I was making the best use of the fabric. I also had to save some fabric for the double welt cording later on.

You can see how faded the old fabric was. I used a yardstick to line up the dots on the old fabric with the dots on the new fabric to make sure it was level.

If you're using a solid fabric this part is much easier because it really is a matter of just copying the fabric you're using as a template. Patterns are a little more complicated. First of all you need to decide which way you want the fabric to run on the chair (in my case I decided the ikat dots should run horizontal). Then you need to leave a little extra room so you can line up the pattern on the chair. I cut each piece about 2 to 3 inches larger than the template fabric after making sure it was lined up horizontally.

I did not follow any of the cuts around the legs when I was cutting my fabric. Those get put in later.

I spent a lot of time lining up my fabric on the seat of the chair. I'm a stickler about patterns matching so I used a yardstick to line up the dots just so. Then I realized the chair isn't square, so lining them up perfectly in both directions wouldn't be possible and focused on the vertical line and did the best I could with the horizontal line.

Here's where I'm going to tell you what you should do, and what I did on my second try, not what I actually did (which is to say that I screwed it up on the first try and had to order more fabric). To maintain the layout that I spent so long figuring out, I tacked the fabric in the center back with one staple and then pulled the fabric snug and put one staple exactly opposite it on the front underside. (I later figured out that if you're using a pneumatic stapler, it's best to turn psi down for these first staples to make them easier to pull out if necessary. You can always tap them all the way if they stay.) The arm braces were the most difficult obstacle to deal with, so I worked the fabric around these first. I held the fabric up and then used the pencil to draw a line following the angle of the arm brace. I then cut carefully on that line. I erred on the side of cutting less and then went back and cut more as necessary, finishing with a small tear-drop shaped cut to keep the fabric from ripping more. This cut was pulled tight between the arm and the cushion and then I rolled the fabric under to keep a nice edge and stapled it on the underside around the arm brace. I followed the same process on the other side before moving on to any other stapling.

Cutting and folding around the arm brace.

With the two most difficult release cuts finished and tacked, I went back to the front and back, spacing the staples out quite a bit. When everything was set I went back and put in a billion more staples to hold everything nice and tight.

I made my way around the back to make the release cuts around the back braces the same way I did the other cuts. Smoothing out the back corners was a little tricky, but I just kept pulling the fabric taught and stapling a lot. Around the legs I just cut a little and rolled the fabric under again so the edge always looked nice.

With the arm brace cuts made and stapled I worked my way around to the back legs for the next cuts.

The front corners were the last thing to get stapled because they have a little tuck in them and it was a good place to take up any extra fabric. I pulled the underside of the fold (from the side) across and tacked it underneath the chair sort of inside the leg, then created a straight tuck and smoothed the fabric with a bamboo skewer and stapled that part after rolling the edge under. Later I put a furniture tack over this one staple in front (this is how it was originally). After all that, I went back and filled in any areas that needed staples. Lots and lots of staples. Then I put the dust cover back on over the top to make it nice and neat.

Although the chair is upside down in the top picture, you can see how the tuck was made originally. I duplicated that but pulling the underside of the tuck taught and stapling and then creating a nice pleat on the front.

Here's what the bottom looked like when  all the stapling was finished and before I put the dust cover back on.

After all that pushing and pulling on the seat, the back of the chair was a breeze. I started with the piece of fabric that faces the back, making sure to line up the dots exactly in a line with the dots on the seat. Because the back is slightly curved, I actually did the top and the bottom first, alternating stapling one, then the other and alternating sides, pulling taught each time. Then I did the sides working out from the middle and again alternating side to side. Because the fabric I was using was pretty thin, I spaced out my staples then folded the edge over and did another staple in between through a double layer of fabric.

I made sure to line the dots up with the seat.

First I stapled the back on one layer and then turned the fabric over and stapled through two layers for extra hold.

Then I stuck the foam back on. It just held itself there, suspended in air.

For the front layer of the back, I again lined up the dots to continue the pattern from the seat, then stapled the entire top first (I used a row of dots to make sure I was staying even) on the underside of the fabric. This avoided having any raw edges sticking out from behind the trim at the end. Then I folded it down over the foam and folded the edge under so I was stapling through two layers of fabric. I pulled it tight and stapled three staples in the bottom row to hold it, then put a few on each side to make sure everything was nice and tight. It was a little hard to pull the fabric tight with the edge folded under so I used my needle-nosed pliers to pull the fabric while I stapled. It's important to try to keep these rows of staples in a pretty straight line so the trim covers them nicely.

I used a needle-nosed pliers to pull the folded-over fabric tight while I stapled the front.

Here's what it looked like after stapling but before the trim went on to cover the staples.

With everything stapled it was just a matter of attaching the trim. It sounds like cheating to just glue it on, but believe it or not, that's really how it's done. I bought some trim from the fabric store but ended up liking the look of double welt cording better.

I'm not going to get into how to sew double welt cording because me telling you how to sew is like me telling you how to perform brain surgery. I'm unqualified. I'll just tell you that with a cording foot (I couldn't find a double cord foot but the single cord foot worked fine) it's not hard and I actually spent far more time reading the sewing machine directions than actually sewing the welting. Just follow this tutorial on how to make it.

When I made mine I knew I didn't want any dots showing so I made sure to line it up so just the navy fabric would be showing. By the way, you don't HAVE to cut your fabric for cording on the bias, it just goes around corners a little easier if you do. I'm sort of cheap about using fabric and you use a lot less if you just cut straight so that's how I made mine. Also, it turns out that it was only $5 more to buy 250 yards of double welt cording than it was to buy 5 yards, so I now have more double welt cord than I could ever use. So if you want some for a project to try, e-mail me your address and how much you need (within reason ... I'm not sending you 100 yards), let me know and I'll send it to you. For free. Because I don't need this much.

Anyway, if you follow that tutorial, all that's left to do is glue it on. I just used my hot glue and stuck it on. The only tricky part was dealing with the ends. I ootched the cord out a little and nipped it off then folded the fabric over and tacked it down with glue so there wouldn't be any fraying ends.

Glue on the double welt to cover the staples. Scintillating television going on in the background there.

I folded the ends of the fabric on the cording under and glued it to keep it from fraying.

And that's it. Honestly I can't believe how good it turned out and with the exception of removing the fabric, this was one of the more fun projects I've done.

Before and after (pre-trim) in the same shot.

After and after.

P.S. I have a lot of these little tutorials that I find online and then later use for projects on my How-to Pinterest board. It runs the gambit of cleaning tips to DIY light fixtures, but if you're interested in some of them, check my boards out there.


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