Miss Mustard Seed's Slipcover Tutorial Review

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

I finished up the family room make-over (mostly) and jumped right into a job painting a dresser, desk, and bookshelf set for a client. The finish on the furniture was giving me a little grief, but I finally sucked it up, got out my palm sander, and sanded everything down to a beautiful smooth blank slate. I primed everything today and am excited to put the first coat of paint on tomorrow. I can't wait to show you!

 But before that, I wanted to give a run down on my slipcovers. I primarily used Miss Mustard Seed's six part (yes SIX parts-God bless her) video series to get my bearings.
We inherited Big Brown from my parents about five years ago, and while the way it fit in our family room worked great, it has always been, well, big and brown. So very, very brown.
So I've been reading tutorials about making your own slipcovers for years, but most of them didn't quite make sense or just didn't look like something I could do. My sewing skills are limited to straight lines don't you know.

Here is a link to my Pinterest board with different slipcovering advice. Anyhow, when I decided to makeover the family room I finally got serious about making slipcovers. It was that tipping point where I figured even poorly made slipcovers were going to look better than what I had. 

I read a bunch about white slipcovers and using drop cloths as fabric but my mom talked me off that ledge by pointing out that we are a family of cave people. So I went with grey. 

I looked at our local fabric stores and couldn't find what I wanted at a price I liked too so I ended up ordering from Online Fabric Store. This is the second time I've used them and they are cheaper than retail and ship quickly. Winning.

I used this chart to figure out how much fabric to order-and then added 5 more yards for fabric insurance.
LINK

After that I studied Miss Mustard Seed's videos in earnest. She teaches to drape your fabric over the frame of your piece, cut the pieces while it is draped in place, pin the pieces together while they are on your sofa, and then sew the pieces together one at a time.
I love piping, and she has a video for that too! So I made a gazillion yards of piping and now I am a fierce piping expert. True story.
Here are some more "in process" photos.
As you pin and sew you are working with the slipcover inside out. After you sew each new piece you can flip your work right side up and lay it over the sofa to see how it's fitting. 

It's a little tedious, but it also lets you see any mistakes or adjustments you want to make before you get too far along.

The main piece of advice I would give you is to keep going even when things aren't lining up exactly perfect. See the corner of this slip? I couldn't make it lay flat for the life of me, but it looks fine with all the cushions on.
And speaking of cushions, nearly all of mine have little puckers and tucks in them. I just gritted my teeth and kept sewing. There is a noticeable improvement from my first cushion to my last, but I wasn't about to go back and resew any dang cushions. I had twelve of them for Pete's sake!

Do you see the chips?! That is why I couldn't have white!

In the end I am just so happy with how these came out; I am sending a big internet-y hug to Miss Mustard Seed for making such an awesome tutorial! Now you do it :-)






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Decorating Order of Operations

Thursday, May 28, 2015

I think my family might be sick to death of hearing me say, "I just took an online decorating class and blah blah blah words whatever..." I learned so much though and am finally happy with my family room. 
Here is how it looked before the course.  I'd worked pretty hard to get it to this point, and still couldn't figure out why I didn't love it.

 This room has three regular doors plus pocket doors that take up most of one wall and two large windows. There is almost no uninterrupted wall space where I can put large furniture without blocking a door or window. Here is my very hasty drafting of the floor plan so you can really get what I'm talking about.
That little door on the right is the only way to the kitchen, which means my family room is really just a big hallway to the kitchen. That's why I don't have a coffee table or anything; there is a constant stream of traffic through here, because everyone in the entire known world (including me) wants to see what's in my fridge, and having to walk around a table is a pain. I did try it. 

So in the past I've tried fixing this room by moving furniture around, messing with the bookshelves, adding a gallery wall,and whatever else I could think of that would make it pretty. But in this class I finally learned that there is an order to decorating that makes things a lot easier.

 The main steps are to quiet your room, deal with the big things, take care of carpet and window treatments, and only then do you get to do the fun work of adding artwork and other decorative things.

So I began with "quieting" my room by getting everything out of there but the really big stuff. It felt so good. I actually left the room like this for a week before doing anything because it felt so peaceful.

Here's my before.
 And here it is with most of the stuff cleared out.
 Once everything was out I could see that some of my big elements weren't working for me anymore and no amount of cute vases or throw pillows were going to fix it. I got rid of the piano that no one played by posting it for free on Craigslist, I painted my walls white, traded out the table under the TV for a larger dresser, and I ordered grey fabric to make slipcovers for my big brown sofas. I thought about buying new sofas, but these fit well along the wall and hold a bunch of teenagers. I decided I want to make them work a few more years and when we are empty nesting I'll replace with one sofa and two chairs. Or something.

I added an area rug that was nearly twice the size of my old one so that it reached under almost all of my furniture and helped tie the pieces together.
Apparently puny area rugs are a problem.

 I moved some of the furniture around, although there aren't a lot of options with all those windows and doors in the way. Putting the green chair and bookshelf where the piano used to be is making me really happy though.
styled book shelves
Our teacher was adamant that window treatments be hung before any pictures go up so I got that done and then edited down my gallery wall to my favorite pictures and frames.
 Before I used every frame in my house to make my gallery wall, and some of them weren't in very good shape or had images that I didn't love. Now the gallery is smaller, but I love everything there. Especially this picture of Riley.
 Earthquake putty is your best friend when doing a gallery wall! A little blob on the corner of each frame and you don't have to deal with crooked pictures driving you crazy all the time.

By now you must be dying to know, the class I took was The Cozy Minimalist class from one of my favorite bloggers, The Nester.
Link
She's offering the course as a go at your own pace download for something crazy like $35. I would totally recommend it. I took the live webinar, but with this you get the same materials that cover all kinds of stuff like creating a focal point, furniture scale, window treatments, textures in a room and more. I learned a lot that I can't wait to apply to my next project, the guest room (you can see that finished project here).

 Now hold on for a million pictures of that slipcover. It was a ton of work but it looks so much better! And don't you feel so good when you fix something you already have instead of just buying something new? Click HERE for more details on how I did it. When I have insomnia this couch is my best friend, plus, it used to be my sister's couch that she laid on, and I like keeping it for that reason too.


 So that is it. Next time you find yourself trying to fix a room by adding another throw pillow, try using this order of decorating. I think you'll like it.

 I applied the same principles to my "use what you have" guest room makeover that I hope you'll check out HERE, and HERE.

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A Visit From Maddie

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Sometimes I still can't believe that two of my children have grown up and flown out of our little nest. It's super crazy-I'm so proud of the grown up stuff they are doing; but in my heart I think they are just my little Maddie and Katie baby girls. Maddie and her husband Kenny came for a visit last month and since my blog wears many hats, including our family journal, I wanted to post some pics of the fun we had while she was here.

We went to our favorite ice cream shop, Lottie's. Marc was at work and Ellie was at school so it was just Jonathan, Maddie, Kenny and I. Sometimes they make fun of my obsessive photo documentation of their lives.

Later that night we met Grammy and Papa for dinner at a great Korean bbq restaurant.  For some reason the only photo I have is a plate of raw meat. You don't have to pin it if you don't want to.
But really, that is fun family dining right there! Live fire at your table; what could be better?

The next day was so special. Katie and my mom were able to spend the day with us and it was just about as perfect as a girls' day can get. We started out downtown at a cool little store where you can custom mix your own perfume. We each sniffed about a million different scented oils until we came up with concoctions that we liked, then the barista mixed our personal perfumes into little roller ball dispensers for us. We got to give them our own names too. My mom named hers "Lani Love," and I named mine "Mermaid."
I made all three of those cute girls! I am amazing.

Then we wandered downtown a bit and visited the candy shop. Because, candy.
After that we wanted to go to Danville where they have some of the cutest little boutiques, and Ellie asked us to drop her off at home first. Her twelve year old sensibilities do not yet include spending the afternoon oohing and aahing over overpriced home goods. It will come.

For Maddie, a critical part of any visit to California is feasting on fresh sushi, but Kenny doesn't like it so we decided to get our raw fish quota in while we were out for lunch. The place we were at had some of the prettiest plates I've ever seen.
The weather was as perfect as we could ask for and we ate outside on the lovely patio.
 My mom doesn't actually like sushi either but she is a good sport and eats a bento box with teriyaki chicken when we make her go. She is too nice to tell us if she doesn't like it so we just assume she does.

After lunch we went shopping. I am one hundred percent sure my mom likes shopping. We purchased only the essentials, including shoes, handbags, earrings, and a hat for Katie. It was such a good day!

Later in the week we had family bowling night. None of us are that good. Some of us like to talk like we are good (not me, I stand at the line, roll the ball and hope), but none of us are that great. What we are is loud and competitive (...again, not me).
 We ran into some of our friends there that night too, it was fun playing with their kids.

I tried to get the requisite bowling shoe photo but some people could not be made to understand what I was artistically trying to accomplish. A star! It shouldn't be that hard. But, whatever. This is what I got. Then my peeps didn't want to stand in a tight little circle in the middle of the bowling ally while I took pictures of our feet anymore so I had to give up.
They sort of tolerated the group shot.

I love those guys.

And that about covers it. Oh! Marc and I took Maddie and Kenny to a Giants' game too. I love Giants' stadium; the view of the Pacific is fantastic.
I can't wait to see those kids again!


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How To Paint Upholstery With Chalk Paint

Tuesday, April 28, 2015


I just finished taking an online decorating class from one of my favorite bloggers, The Nester, and the room I focused on is my family room, and the most fun/crazy/gorgeous thing I did was paint my old white chair this wonderful green. 

That sentence is a bit of a rough entry, but it seems to be the best I can come up with. Moving on.

I posted a photo on Instagram and it turns out that many of my friends want to know how this went down, so here, just for you, is a tutorial with video even of how to paint upholstery. I know! Crazy right?

I think step one is to start out with a chair that just can't possibly be any worse than it already is; that way you won't have to be scared that paint is going to ruin it. Here's mine.
Gross, right? I've had it for about 15 years and it has been folexed to death and steam cleaned several times and really, it was just nasty.

I can't believe I'm showing you this.

I knew was going to have to reupholster it or throw it away; when I saw someone else in my class painting their chair it seemed like it was worth a shot.

I decided to go big and used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Antibes Green. I love this color! And I got it from a darling store called the The Boom Space in Danville, CA. If you're local you should go there, it is so sweet!

My supplies were: 
1 quart of chalk paint
1 two inch angled Purdy paint brush
a spray bottle with water in it
 a large plastic cup to put the paint in
blue painters tape
Annie Sloan clear wax
a brush for waxing 

Chalk paint is very low VOC so I just put a drop cloth down, taped off the wood legs, and painted my chair right in the family room. I wasn't bothered by fumes or bad smells at all. 

I diluted my paint with one part water to one part paint. You don't have to measure, chalk paint is very flexible. Just pour some paint into a container you plan to paint from and add what looks like the same amount of water. Mix it up well; I used a plastic knife. The paint will be really runny, which is great because you want to paint thin layers that are going to soak in and dye the fabric instead of sitting on top of it.

Begin by spraying the fabric lightly with water. This helps the paint penetrate the fabric better. I think. Spray along the sections you're painting as you go.

Now just go for it! Brush the paint every which way so that all the fibers get covered. Swirl your brush even. Here is a video of me painting. Yes, I am that committed to helping you do this.

It took two coats to cover the white canvas fabric on this chair and I only waited about two hours for the first coat to dry before putting on the second coat.  Looking at it now I think it could have used a third coat for really opaque coverage. As it is there are slight variations in the color. It almost looks like suede that has been brushed in different directions. I like it. Some online tutorials recommend lightly sanding between coats but I didn't because the cotton is already flat. I did try this technique on a dining chair covered in a velvety fabric and sanding that between coats helped keep the fibers from clumping together and getting too stiff.
After letting the paint dry for a solid 24 hours I applied a coat of clear wax.
 Here is a fascinating video of how I did that. Note that I avoided any talking so as not to freak you out with my totally weird and squeaky video voice. More importantly, note that I used only a small amount of wax at a time and brushed it on very lightly and quickly. My aim was to have only a light coat of the wax so I applied very little pressure to the brush and moved quickly to spread it around.

We didn't sit in the chair for another 24 hours to make sure the wax could really dry well and not come off on our clothes.
I am so happy with how this came out! And since I like you so much I'm going to try and answer all the questions you have before you give this a try. I'm kind of a mind reader, but if I missed any of your questions leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Q. What does the fabric feel like after you paint and wax it?
A. It definitely feels stiffer. If you are familiar with sunbrella indoor/outdoor fabric, it feels a lot like that. It isn't uncomfortable, but it isn't soft and cozy either. I wouldn't do this to your favorite reading and napping chair, but for your "occasionally a guest sits here chair," it's perfect!
Q. How much paint does it take? Do you have to use chalk paint?
A. It took a lot of paint. This one chair used about 3/4 of a quart of ASCP, and that's with watering it down. I love the colors and quality of ASCP so for me it was worth it, but I've seen other tutorials online where people use latex paint mixed with fabric medium so you could check that out too.
Q. How will it hold up?
A. So far, so good. The wax helps to protect the painted fabric from wear and tear, but again, I wouldn't do this on a piece that sees a lot of traffic.
Q. Shelley! Has it turned your bum green? And doesn't the wax stick to your clothes?
A. Nope. And I've wiggled my seat around in there just to be sure before I let any guests sit in it :-)
Last Q. How does it really look? Like, you can make anything look good in pictures, we want the TRUTH.
A. It looks really good. Thinning the paint means it really soaks in and dyes the fabric so it looks like the chair was upholstered in green fabric, not like I slapped craft paint over it. Other fabrics might be trickier, but cotton upholstery canvas took the paint super well.
I love the pop of color and contrast that the bright green adds to the room. If you are thinking of doing this, I say go for it!

*Next up: making slipcover for big brown.

Linking up at these great places!
Fluster Buster
DIY Show Off
Skip to my Lou





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Storage Wars-Fosse Edition

Sunday, March 15, 2015

I have fantasies that this blog will evolve into a tasteful, inspiring website about decorating, cooking, DIYing, and other domestic pursuits. The problem is that what I like to write about is my life, and my life refuses to get on board and be tasteful and inspiring. It more wants to be smelly and weird. Want to hear about it anyway? 

 So last summer Jonathan had a sweet job putting together long boards and we forced him to save half of each paycheck. He kept pestering us about things he REALLY wanted to buy (the exact opposite of save) causing Marc to utter the rule that has changed everything. The rule was this: you can only use the money in your savings account to make more money. I thought Marc was maybe going to help him do some investing or something sane like that.

 But sane is not what ensued. Oh no. What followed was Marc and Jonathan watching this show called Storage Wars where people bid on the contents of abandoned storage units and then sell the contents for a profit. It's pretty nasty if you ask me. Which they didn't. They just got up one lovely Saturday morning and drove off to an auction in Sacramento where apparently the getting was good because they bought three lockers full of everything gross you can imagine.

 See this photo from the TV show? How it makes the people look semi-cool and like there's lots of money involved?


That is NOT what it is like! What it is like is people stash all their weird and nasty stuff that they don't want into a locker and then they decide that they don't even want the stuff bad enough to keep paying for the unit so they abandon it and then it sits there for a year getting rank and then your husband and son buy it! And then instead of realizing that the stuff is gross and smells awful they put it in a truck and bring it all to your house. That is what it is like.

 Do I sound bitter?

 I'm going to stop ranting for one minute and concede that between selling things on Craigslist and selling for a day at the flea market Marc has helped Jonathan make a butt load of money. Which would be fantastic if it didn't also mean that my garage and garden room and backyard are FULL of other peoples crap. Because even though they've sold a ton of stuff, there is still a small apartment's worth of "treasures" to sort and sell. So, back to ranting.

 Here is a picture of our backyard that I took while we were sorting stuff in preparation for the next soiree at the flea market.


 Do we look cool? Or like there is lots of money involved? No. We look like white trash. We also have, like, four cars parked in our driveway and a 1959 VW Bug in our garage waiting to be fixed up, but I digress.

I know what you want to know. It's what everyone who hears about this little venture asks me...you want to know what was in the lockers. A bad smell is what was in the lockers; it's the main thing that makes me so grouchy about all this. But there was a TON of actual items too. Stuff that Marc and Jonathan often think is awesome but I refuse to be sucked into their madness. That's not really true, the stuff is at my house and I begrudgingly help go through it (because I am trying to facilitate it speedily being sold or thrown away) so obviously I have been sucked in. But I don't think the things they've found are awesome. That's where I put my foot down.

 But for your entertainment, here is a by no means comprehensive list of the things we have found. You can make up your own mind about its awesomeness:

 A massive collection of "let's be prepared for the zombie apocalypse" knives and axes and brass knuckles and machetes with a few clubs thrown in for good measure. 

 Upwards of 20 watches, a washer and dryer set, a bunch of silver jewelry, a bowflex, a whole bunch of prescription drugs (not sure if all the marijuana was "medical"), six TVs, someone's beloved collection of Mariah Carey paraphernalia,  tons of icky clothes that we mostly took to the dump, two old reclining chairs, lots and lots of tools, DVDs (we threw out the ones that were porn)(which was a lot), every kind of electronic from stereos to irons, pocket rocket bikes, regular bikes, and on and on and on. Here is Jonathan examining a tin full of keys to who knows what that someone saw fit to store.
Being a straight arrow Mormon I have never actually handled marijuana or pornography before. And for some reason when I come across it I act like a ten year old, snickering about the pot and shrieking and covering my eyes if I glimpse the cover of a pornographic DVD. It's just so gross! Don't worry, all illegal materials have been bagged and taken to the dump, including a fairly extensive bong collection. 

 And that, my friends, is what's been going on at the Fosse's. Don't be jealous. 

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