Kindle Cover

My lovely Other Half bought me a Kindle for Christmas so I decided to have a go at making some kind of cover for it to keep it clean.  I found some nice fabric in my stash that had writing on it so I thought this would be good for the outside.  For the lining I used some turquoise polkadot cotton fabric.  I put a layer of thin wadding next to the lining and then a layer of interfacing to give the whole thing a bit more body.

To make the cover I placed the Kindle on the lining fabric and cut out a rectangle leaving about an inch all the way round.  Then I used this piece as a pattern and cut out one piece from the outside fabric, one piece from the interfacing and one from the wadding.  Then I used it as a pattern again on the remainder of the lining fabric and cut out another piece in a similar size but made it about 1.5 inches longer for the flap.  This new longer bit I then used as a pattern to cut out the other pieces from the outer fabric, the wadding and the interfacing.  This gave me four pieces of each size.

I cut a piece of velcro so that it was wide enough to fit across the front of the cover.  It was about the same size as the width of the actual Kindle.  I stitched the fluffy bit to the right side of the smaller outer fabric at one of the short ends, then stitched the rough bit of velcro to the right side of the longer lining fabric also at one of the short ends making sure they were both central.

Next I took the two pieces of lining fabric and placed them right sides together with the larger bit on the bottom.  Then I laid them on top of the larger wadding piece and placed the smaller wadding piece on top so I had like a sandwich with the two wadding pieces on the out side and the two lining pieces on the inside right sides together.  Then I stitched around three sides starting about 0.5 inch under the top of the shorter piece, sewing down the side, across the bottom and up the other side until I was 0.5 inch away from the top of the smaller piece again.

Next I did the same thing with the outer fabric but this time I made it into a sandwich with the interfacing on the out side and the outer fabric pieces in the middle right sides together and stitched around the three sides again same as before leaving 0.5 each side.

Next I folded back the top edge of the smaller pieces and tacked across them to keep them down in place.

Next I placed the long sides together so that the interfacing was next to the wadding and stitched the flaps together just around the three top sides, the short bits at the top of each side of the flap and across the top.

Next I turned the flap through to the right side making sure the corners were right out, then I turned the outer pieces through to the right side and stuffed the lining and wadding bit inside again making sure that the corners were well turned out.  Next I tried the Kindle inside to make sure it was a nice fit.  If you need to make it a bit more shallow at this point then just turn it all back inside out again and stitch the bottoms of both pieces (separately) again a little bit up from the last seam and trim off the excess.

Once I had it all nice and the right size, I turned it back in the right way with the lining inside the pouch and pinned the two front edges together and hand sewed them close.  Then I used the machine to do a row of top stitching around the flap and gave it all a good press with the iron (mind how you iron over the velcro as if your iron is too hot it might melt it).

Footstool To Match The Sofa

I have covered my footstool to match the sofa using a piece of fabric left over.  It was really easy to do as it just needed a few staples underneath to hold the fabric on.  I was going to put some of the braid for the dining chairs around the outside but decided it looked nice enough as it was.

Recovering Our Dining Chairs

I must be a glutton for punishment as no sooner had I finished doing our sofa than I decided to have a go at doing the dining chairs.  I had quite a bit of the plain black fabric left over so I didn't have to buy any fabric.  Our chairs have fabric set in the backs as well as the seats so it wasn't going to be an easy job.  As before, I searched Youtube and found a good video showing very similar chairs to ours and how the woman had stripped and covered them.

Our chairs were a pale pink velvet and they had studs around the outside.  Some of the studs were missing and the pink had got really dirty what with kids dropping food and the dog rubbing up against them.  Here are some photos of them before I started stripping them.

I decided I wasn't going to put the buttons through the backs either which would save a lot of work.

The stripping was a mini nightmare, there were so many staples, the studs were strips of pretend studs and they were fixed on with tiny staples plus then the fabric was stapled on with hardly any gaps.  I didn't have a proper staple removing tool so I had to use a bradawl to lift one side up and then a pair of pliers to pull them out.  This next photo shows one of the chairs with the top fabric stripped off and the one after shows another chair with the whole back taken out ready for rubbing down and varnishing.

The stain and varnish needed to dry off over night so I was doing either one or two at a time so that I could leave them up on the table to dry so the dog didn't brush past them and cover them with his hairs.

Once they were dry it was a case of stapling on the new fabric to the bottoms.  The backs were a bit harder as the foam that was in the backs had holes in where the buttons had gone through so I had to stuff some stuffing into the holes and then cover the whole piece with a bit of wadding which I glued over the foam.  This made the back nice and smooth when I covered it.  I had to staple the back piece on first then place the foam on top and then staple the front piece over it all.  It was quite a job as I had to make sure there were plenty of staples in it everywhere to make sure the fabric didn't pull out as soon as we sat on them.

The final bit to do was to cover the rows of staples with some lovely braid we got from Dunelm Mill using my new glue gun.  I found it easy to do although I did end up with a couple of burnt fingers.  Here is a photo of one of the finished chairs.

And here is a photo of them around our table with the Christmas table cloth on.