Being Crafty..

When J-Twice lived in the dorms before we got married, he found an old rocking chair that was perfect for his "gaming chair".  He moved out of the dorms and into our first house, this chair came with him.  We had such a small living room that said chair sat in the corner in the dining room for the most part and didn't get much use. We had all intentions of leaving this chair behind when we moved here to Turkey.  Before we knew it, the movers had a sticker placed on it and it was getting packed up. I thought, oh who cares, we may need it. It now fits perfectly in this little corner of our living room.  This chair had an old, ugly fabric on it and it was filthy...I hated it.  Most of it was covered up w a blanket, and it made it "okay" to look at.

Back in September, I had met this awesome friend, Amanda.  Little did I know back then about how awesome she is and the creative, crafty, ideas she can come up with.  Here in Turkey, there are TONS of fabric shops.  I had all intentions of taking said chair cushions to a shop and having them reupholster it. Amanda had a better idea: let's do it ourselves, it can't be that hard! So, on an adventure to Old Adana, we got off the bus in what they call "The Fabric District" ...we had no idea what we were looking for.  After looking in many stores, I finally found a fabric I liked.  We had no idea how much fabric we needed, so we picked a random number...turns out we had more than enough but better than not having enough, right!?  This fabric sat in my house for a few weeks before we finally set out to complete this project.

Then comes this past week.  We said "let's do this"!

 We had to take off the old, ugly fabric but being careful not to completely ruin it because it was going to be our pattern for the new cover.

Let me just say, that fabric was gross!!!!! I don't even want to know how old it was or what it had been through! haha  Amanda and I traced the old fabric and made a pattern with the new.  Remind you, I haven't sewn much else other than a pillow and a stocking (and i'm pretty sure mom did most of that work!) Amanda has only sewn a couple different things, but has a brand new sewing machine so we were putting it to work! We decided to do the bottom cushion first, because it was going to be the hardest.  We pinned the two pieces together and went to work.  Amanda finds great amusement in watching me do a project, because I get impatient and just do what I need to do to get it done, and quickly.  Meaning, I don't always do what is the correct way or watch what I am doing....also meaning, I messed up and started sewing a rather messed up line. haha  We had it on a triple stitch so it wasn't exactly possible to just take the stitch out and re-do it.  Rather, we prayed it wouldn't look too bad when it was complete! :) 

We were just about complete, and the sewing machine decided to act up.  Or rather, we learned that Turkish thread isn't as great as American thread! haha It wasn't tight enough, so it kept unraveling and messing up the sewing machine.  We couldn't get the sewing machine apart ourselves, so we decided to wait until her husband got home and he could look at taking it apart.  Therefore, we couldn't do much more that day.  The next day, Amanda got it fixed and finished the bottom piece. (much against my approval, but she doesn't listen to me very well.haha) She did a great job, and even fixed my mistakes as much as she could! :) 

The hard part was done.  Or, so we thought.  haha  We went to working on the back piece.  We made our pattern from the old fabric again.  Tried to match the fabrics up and couldn't figure out why it wasn't matching up.  It only took Amanda a couple of minutes to say "ohhh, duh!" and as soon as she said it, I knew what we did.  We made two of the same pieces!! hahaha Sooo...we had to make another pattern, this one being the correct way. (Front and back vs. 2 fronts)  Once we got all that figured out, we went to town on the sewing machine.  Much easier sewing this part! 

We got the old cushion back in, stuffed it a little and had to hand stitch the bottom to complete it.  I will say, even though I attempted a little bit, Amanda did the majority of that! She rocks, really.

We had worked on this back piece for quite a while that day, it was getting late and we both had tons to do for our Thanksgiving meal the next day.  I went home, telling Amanda to not worry about completing it, we would do it after the holiday.  I told you already, she doesn't listen to me much...because she showed up yesterday with the piece completed! Yay! :)

And now we have a cute little rocking chair, with fabric that matches the rest of the house! I think for our first time reupholstering something, we did a pretty rockin' job!! (Just dont look too close!) So.. many, many thanks to Amanda for helping this girl reach into her crafty side!