diy oversized chair - part 2

Full disclosure .... I plan to expose all the mistakes I made during the making of the chair. There really isn't a lot of information available on making your own upholstered chair, so there's gonna be mistakes. Quite a few actually. I'm not apposed to meeting a challenge head on - making adjustments as needed and learning as I go.

If you missed Part I of this article, you can find it here.

So my original plan was flawed in several ways. The deck was too high, so we actually broke the poplar out and cut it in half - then we put it back together. I also needed to add boards about an inch above the deck all the way around the chair as the red lines indicate. You'll need those for stapling the foam and fabric.

I had a Robotics meeting at the high school so I had to take off and leave Burke to having the fun of cutting springs and taking pictures. So excuse the messy pictures.

You can buy these springs precut, but in our case - the chair was over sized and pre-

cut springs weren't an option. So I bought a whole roll and cut the pieces ourselves using wire cutters. It worked just fine.

I did research on what type of springs to use and I went with these. They are call sinuous springs or zig zag springs. It was these or coil springs and I went with these for ease of use. They don't need to be tied down.

You get these clips, nail them in.

We spaced them about 3 inches apart.

We used this tool to stretch the spring to each clip.

We cut the springs about an 1 - 1 1/2 inches shorter than the span of the chair.

Make sure you nail everything down really well and file down any rough edges on the springs so they don't cut your fabric.

It really only took a couple of hours and no tying! 

To have the springs all move together when you're up or down, we used these long pieces of wrapped wire and attached them to the springs.

Next we took webbing and added them to the arms to provide reinforcement for the foam padding.

Someone I work with gave me burlap that was left over from his wedding, so I used it to reinforce the deck and outside arms.

Let's breakout the cost so far.

For the springs and webbing, including tools to put these on. $180.00. I have enough now for multiple chairs and the tools I need to put them on.

Mistakes I've made so far:

- miscalculated the height of the chair, so we had to take apart the kick board.

- not installed wood side ways for ease of upholstery.

- spending more on tools I didn't have or having to buy something in bulk because most people don't do this. :)

Total cost so far: $300

pillow covers

I've been busy lately making slipcovers and curtains plus working on the new over sized chair for the living room. I wanted alot of throw pillows for the furniture pieces and found these down and goose feather pillow forms. I love them. I bought them off Amazon for roughly $15/piece. I also went out to Fabric.com and found some contrasting french country fabrics.

I made about 8 pillows covers. They have a zipper so that I can change them up whenever I get sick of the fabric or simple want a change of pace.

The best thing I ever bought was this piping foot. I spent $10.00 and it has made a world of difference. I've made a lot of piping lately with the slip covers and with my new foot, they always turn out beautifully. You can find the foot here. My Brother machine requires a high shank, so I purchased accordingly.

The side view of the piping foot. It has the groove where the piping fits as you sew along.

So, let's start with the how to make the piping. This picture is the piping I made for a slipcover, but I did the same for the pillow covers. Cut some strips 1 and 5/8th inch wide and cut enough to go around the pillow.

Sew the binding strips together using this method. With right sides together, sew diagonally.

Then cut off the little triangles so it looks like this.

Using the piping (or welting), fold the fabric over the piping.

You can also use your zipper foot to make your piping.

Measure your pillow and cut the top fabric the same dimensions. Once you sew everything together, it'll be about an half inch smaller than your pillow, which will make the pillow nice and full.

Now for the back.... Add another 1 1/2 inch to the width to allow for the zipper.  Fold it in half and cut it so you have two equal size pieces.. Fold down one side about 1/2 inch and iron it. Fold the other side about an inch and iron down. 

Choose a zipper that is roughly the same width and color as your fabric. Using your zipper foot sew down the 1/2 side. Then butt the one inch side together so it covers the zipper and sew down the other side.

I usually take both top and bottom and put them together and make sure they are exactly the same dimensions. Make some adjustments if not. Then I sew the piping around the outer edge of the top piece. Make little cuts in the corners of either the piping or fabric pieces to relieve any tension while making your turn. When you get to the end, cut some of the piping and folder over the fabric.

Slip the one side of the piping down inside the folder over fabric like this.

With right sides together, sew the top and bottom pieces together. Tip: make certain the zipper is open before sewing completely closed. It's a real pain to try and open the zipper after it's been sewn together.

Cut the corners to take out the bulk when you turn it right side out.

Turn right side out and put your pillow inside.

Giving the pillow the extra wide lip really hides the zipper.

You can barely see it and the extra wide lip keeps the zipper from snagging or catching on other items.

I bought the pillows for about $15.00 each at Amazon. You can find the pillows here, made in the USA. You can find some really great fabrics for around $10.00 a yard, so for $25.00 you can have some high quality throw pillows. I saw the same high quality pillows at Pottery Barn for $50.00 and they didn't have the zipper. I really love the down/feather versus a form insert too. Definitely worth the buy and effort.

embroidery patch - part 2 - sewing

So now that the design is completed, time to make them a reality. If you missed how to design them, you can find it here in the Part I write up.

Once I figured out the magic recipe, these are pretty fun to make!

Start with a tear away stabilizer. I have tried both water soluble and regular tear away and I find them to be roughly the same. The regular tear away stuff is a tad bit more robust for this project.

I brought in my brother pes project into my PR-600II. Here's a shot of where I changed the thread color. I needed to select the "hand" to tell the machine to stop after each layer.

Put the hoop in and hit start. The first pass will do the bubble outline and it's really only to see where to put your fabric. What I have here is some craft stabilizer that I use for purses and things I want to be sturdy and the chosen color fabric.

I lay both the stabilizer and fabric together down over my first layer and make sure the fabric covers the design and let the machine stitch the next layer.

Take the hoop out and cut it next to the stitching line, very closely. I have the best scissors for doing that. 

Once I put the hoop back in - I let the machine do the rest. I did 2 on the same hoop. Don't make the same mistake I did once and put it in backwards. (sad trombone) Make sure you put the hoop back the same way.

Next I grab some heat n bond - the ULTRAHOLD stuff. The regular will work too, but in this case, I want to make sure there's a nice strong hold.

Make sure you turn the patch over and draw an outline, otherwise it won't fit properly. Take your scissors and cut out the outline just a smidgen smaller than the drawing. Then iron it onto the patch and it's ready to go!

Pull the stabilizer away and I usually dip my finger in water and run it across the edges to remove the white lint left from the stabilizer. You can even run some fray check around the edges if you like. Since I didn't cut the edges, I'd prefer not to. Fray check leaves the thread very stiff.

I hope Scream will like her new iron on patches!

embroidery patch - part 1 - design

Sometimes I write these blog posts just for me. Case in point .... my daughter Jackie plays on a roller derby team and when some of her team mates asked about embroidery patches - she happily informed them, "my Mom can make those!" So I finalized a process for creating embroidery patches. After a few weeks the orders started coming in, I began making them. I messed it up three times before I fully remembered what I had done before. So ....this is me, documenting my steps for any future embroidery patch sales.

First, I started with Gimp. Gimp is a great open source tool for manipulating images. I create a new image about 400 x 140, which equates to about 2 inches in width and picked a nice modern font. Using the text tool, choose your font and type out your word and scale it so it takes up most of the available image space.

In the Layers toolkit, right click on the layer and choose Alpha to Selection. This causes the words to be selected.

Then choose to add a new layer. We will want the bubble outline to be a separate layer - you'll see why later in the project.

Accept the default and choose OK.

To get the bubble outline, you want to grow the selection.

You can play with various setting, but I usually do about 1/4 inch larger.

Looks like this when it works correctly. If you don't see the growth selection, try a smaller grow.

Then go to Edit, and choose Stroke Selection.

Choose a nice solid width. The width you choose will be out applique width, so choose at least an 8.

This is what it looks like.

Now, we need to export this image into 2 different files. One with the text and one with the bubble outline around the text. You can do this with hiding layers. Hide the bubble and then export. This gives you just the text.  Choose File, Export As - then choose a file name. Choose the *.jpg format because Amazing Designs accepts .jpg's.

Then go back and do it again. Hide the text this time and make the bubble layer visible. Export As, and choose a different name.

At this point, you will have 2 files.

Open Digitize N Stitch. I bought this software several years ago for $200. It's been great so far. It's not super complex and does have it limitations but it gets the work done. I've managed to not spend thousands in something else and since I don't make my millions with embroidery .... I'm good.  You can visit their website here.

So open it up and select the digitize option (shown in the pic above).

Choose the text file first and choose Next.

Adjust it if necessary.

You really should have 2 colors, the background and text colors. If you end up with three like shown above, choose Edit image.

Take your paint bucket and fill the extra color so it's all one color.

Save it, and then you should see only 2 colors. If there's still 3 - go back and look for the extra color.

Choose Next.

Choose Create Applique. This will allow us to have the border act as an applique and will apply necessary layers that your machine needs.

Now, it's time to bring in the bubble. Choose Next.

Choose the picture option and select the bubble filename.

Choose the magic wand and click in the bubble area. This will cause the area to become digitized.

Select a bigger hoop if you need one. 

And there you have it. A cool, ready to go digitized patch. In part 2, we'll put it in our embroidery machine and finish it up.