One Mans Trash...

So one day I was driving home and I saw a little white chair on the side of the road and I thought to myself, " I can't believe they're getting rid of that little chair. It's still in pretty good condition, it just needs a little cleaning. Or you could put some fun new fabric on it and revamp the whole thing!" That last thought is the one that did me in. I could do that! So I flipped my car around, parked outside of their house and sat their feeling incredibly awkward for a minute realizing that in a way I was KIND of going through someone's trash. Did that stop me? Of course not, it just slowed me down for a moment. But you better believe I jumped out of my car and loaded it up as fast as a jack rabbit before anyone could see me, and more importantly recognize me. But apparently I'm over that considering I'm telling the world about it now.

Then the chair sat there. And sat there. Because I was a little preoccupied falling in love with my now husband Brandon. And when you're falling in love you don't have any spare time to work on reupholstering chairs. We did, however, LOVE going to see movies at the drive-in and Brandon kept saying how awesome it would be to have a lovesac that we could throw in the back of his truck for when we went. He also had a birthday coming up and so I got it in my head that I could just MAKE a love sac! How hard could it be right? Wrong.  (I promise this is all tied in with the chair story, stay with me) So I bought some plain brown fabric for the inner shell, and went to Hobby Lobby with my sister Jaimie to get some upholstery fabric for the outer cover. And we found the softest prettiest fabric that you could ever imagine. Sure it was more money than I wanted to spend, but Hobby Lobby always has a 40% off coupon available on their website so technically I would be losing money by not buying it . Sure it was floral and this was technically a present for Brandon, but we were getting married so the sac WOULD end up in OUR house and it had to look good.  So I bought it (WITH a little convicing from Jaimie.)
  Then I made the inner shell of the love sac and well....

Not exactly the two person, comfy, lovesac I envisioned and the look on Timmy's face says it all.

"Courtney, your lovesac sucks."

 Be quiet Tim, I know! So I didn't dare waste my beautiful new fabric on it. Then I remembered my chair and felt a little better about all the money I dropped because I could use it for that project! Now on to the good stuff! I have a lot of people ask me how I reupholstered this chair and first of all, disclaimer, I am sure this isn't the professional way of doing it so this is a strict no judge zone.

I started by just using a seam ripper and taking pieces of the fabric apart along seam lines. Then I wanted to save myself from getting a headache later, so I labeled which pieces went where (I never have been one for puzzle doing)

The labeling part seriously came in handy later down the road, so if you do anything like this I would recommend it! Then I just used all the old pieces as a pattern for the new fabric! I laid the new fabric out, pinned the old fabric to it, cut out my shapes, and transferred my labeling to the new pieces.

Once I had everything cut out I started to pin them together according to my labels starting with two of the biggest pieces from the back of the chair. Once I was sure I had them put together correctly I sewed the two new pieces together. I continued by adding one piece at a time until I had all the pieces sewn together. (I failed to get a picture of that) So I slipped it over the chair, stapled the top and the bottom in place and Voila!

The front was the most challenging area, and it shows in the few ripples that are there but for my first time I'm too proud of it to mind them. I continue to debate whether or not I want to stain the legs a darker color but I can't make up my mind. So if you have an opinion on it let me know!  Here's the official before and after.

  Thanks for reading!!