Furniture

Wallpaper Hack: Upgrade Your Jewelry Box in Under an Hour

May 3, 2016

Our jewels help us tell the story of who we are. Right down to our heritage, history, birthday, sense of style, even our marital status. Don't they deserve to be stored in style? Author and furniture-upcycling expert Barb Blair of Knack Studios stops by to share one of the most beautiful projects we've seen in a while, not to mention a very clever use of our our wallpaper! Grab the Mod Podge and an X-Acto knife, and get ready to upgrade that tired old jewelry box of yours!

Designs featured in this project are Jellyfish Black and White Swarm by Peacoquette and Strange Flying Island Toile Purple by Marcador

There is so much talk about organization these days, and many books written on the subject that give us the best tips on purging and living with what we find useful and lovely. How we organize differs for all of us depending on our personal style, but regardless of how you choose to place things, it is always a good idea to have stylish storage pieces. I chose a couple of vintage jewelry boxes and a new unfinished wooden box to create custom storage solutions for jewelry and other small findings that need to be corralled and kept in order.

DIY Upholstered Seat Cushion

April 28, 2015

Looking for a quick and easy, no-sew way to revive your furniture? Look no further! Today on the blog, Spoonflower crew member Theresa shows you how to reupholster a dining chair seat cushion with no more than half a yard of Faux Suede and a few handy tools. Little effort, big reward! Now that’s our kind of project.

Spoonflower’s Faux Suede is the perfect fabric for this simple upholstery project. It has a sturdy weight while still being easy to work with, along with the amazing benefit of a soil release finish making it perfect for dining chairs that are going to get frequent use. With my track record, something will undoubtedly get spilled on these! A little Scotchgard fabric protector before you start can’t hurt either.

Before getting started, I chose Herb Garden Apothecary by Badger & Bee from the Spoonflower marketplace and ordered a full yard. Be sure to measure your seat cushion to make sure you order enough fabric, and if you’re upholstering more than one cushion be sure to calculate how many yards you’ll need. One yard of faux suede is 54″ x 36″ (137 cm x 91.5 cm).

Materials Needed

flat-head screw driver
Phillips head screw driver
industrial stapler and a box of staples
fabric scissors
pliers
4 screws (should already be in the chair)
half a yard of batting (optional)
One yard of Faux Suede

To start, go ahead and flip the chair you want to reupholster upside down and find the four screws underneath the seat that are holding it in place. Grab your Phillips head screwdriver and unscrew all of them to release the seat. Once you have the seat off, you may choose to remove the current fabric, but this is optional. If you do remove it, you can use the flat-head screwdriver and pliers to yank all of the original staples out to release the fabric. I went ahead and removed the fabric from my dining seat and covered it with a layer of white batting to give it a little extra cushion.

If using batting: lay it out on a flat surface, and then lay the seat on top on it face down. Using your fabric scissors, cut around the seat so that you have about about an inch of overlap when pulled up and over the seat as shown below. Use your industrial staple gun to staple the batting down, securing it onto the bottom of the seat.

Next, repeat these steps but this time use your upholstery fabric. You’re going to go through all the same steps of laying out your fabric right side down, with the seat on top, right side down. Cut the fabric around the edges of your seat with enough give so that you can pull about an inch of overlap over to the bottom of the seat. Staple that down with a generous amount of industrial staples.

The most important rule of thumb when upholstering is to make sure the fabric is taught against your base before you staple. You don’t want gaps or loose fabric! You also don’t want it to be so tight that it visibly and unevenly stretches, but just tight enough so that the fabric is secured nicely once stapled down.

There’s a good chance you’re going to run out of staples while doing this! If you need to replenish your supply, just be sure to double check that you are purchasing the right size and model for your unique staple gun. Purchasing a staple size that’s even slightly off could jam your staple gun and make you lose serious momentum on this project! I am speaking from personal experience here, people, it’s not fun.

This is how your seat should look on the front and back once the fabric is entirely stapled down. When stapling the corners, you’ll want to tuck under each side and make a triangle shape with the overlap before securing into place.

You’re almost there! Place the seat back onto your chair base, and grab the 4 long screws you removed in the beginning. Screw the seat back onto the chair.

That’s it! Now that you have a beautiful re-upholstered seat cushion, proceed to have a dinner party so you can show it off to all your friends. Do you have any tricks or tips you swear by for upholstery projects? Be sure to share them in the comments below!

XO,

Theresa

January Refresh: Allie’s Desk Transformation

January 11, 2013

Continuing our January project series to show our spaces a little love and create treasures from worn or plain pieces in our homes, Spoonflower staff member Allie Tate transforms her childhood French provincial desk into a fresh work station ready for new creative projects!

Growing up my two sisters and I all had matching French provincial bedroom sets. I had kept mine through the years and love it, but it needed some serious updating. Having been through my childhood and too many to moves to count through college and life after, my poor furniture had certainly seen better days.

A fresh coat of paint, some decals, and fabric to recover the chair cushion and it would be good as new! Choosing the right decals and fabric was the hardest part of the whole process, and I went with two longtime favorites, CandyPenny’s Woodtype Alphabet decal design and Wolfie and the Sneak’s Kristen fabric.

To start the project, I removed the hardware and sanded the desk. Since it was already a light color, I choose paint of similar color that contained primer and was able to skip an extra coat of paint.

With the help of a paint spray gun, it was super easy to achieve a smooth, even coat of paint in an amazingly short amount of time!

I chose to update the hardware by spray painting it black to tie in with the black in the decal and fabric designs.

To update the chair, I first painted it a similar shade of blue to the one found in the fabric design.

Recovering the chair, I cut the fabric to size and then used a staple gun to attach fabric to the bottom of the cushion. For me, strategically folding and stapling the corners so they weren’t a mess was the most challenging part!

Lining drawers with decal was an easy way to update the drab drawers. I simply measured the inside of the drawers and using large 30”x30” decals I cut a piece to size and covered the bottom of each drawer.
Ta-Da! The end result is a definite upgrade from the sad-looking desk I started with. Now to work on organizing all my crafting and sewing notions that fill the drawers! Looking for more furniture re-do inspo? Follow our Handmade Home Decor board on Pinterest.

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt 10: Making A Sofa Using Recycled Cardboard Tubes

March 13, 2012

This is the tenth in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

Chad’s Intro: This year’s staff contest has to be the most ambitious month-long project I’ve undertaken since graduating from college. A wide open format for this project had Melodie and I (Chad) thinking of all sorts of fun things to do. Ranging from the small (bow-ties), to the abstract (I’ve always wanted to make a fabric tree), to the functional (the couch we finally decided on), we found it really hard to decide on the best project to tackle. When we finally sat down to do some sketches of the eventual end products, we realized that the couch was just crazily ambitious enough to possibly win the contest. Plus we had the universe on our side – on the last night we were sewing the cushions and had Chinese takeout on our break, I got this fortune:

One of the major reasons we decided to do the couch was that I’m driven to find ways to reuse the things we tend to throw away here at Spoonflower. Besides using some of our ink waste to create prints on t-shirts, I’ve been speculating about a way to reuse the large number of cardboard tubes that we recycle each day. Making a couch out of them seemed really interesting and possibly dangerous. Who would think that cardboard could really hold up the weight of two grown adults?

So we had our general idea, but we had to think of what kind of fabric design we wanted to use.

Melodie on fabric design: Both Chad and I are avid music lovers, so it was no surprise that we chose a project that centered around it. I really love the concept of visually representing something that you would normally only be able to enjoy aurally. I decided to create a sound wave design that would be able to span the length of our couch, creating visual movement.

I used a few photos for reference and with the help of one of our more Illustrator savvy coworkers, I drew the design using the pen tool. It was actually a lot easier than I expected it to be, and I definitely plan on tinkering with more fabric designs in the future.

Chad on fabric design: After Melodie created the design, we both sat down and tried to color match against the Spoonflower color map. Since we’re both printers, we understand that though we had a design we both loved, the colors we loved might not turn out exactly as we wanted. Using the color map and Photoshop, we tweaked the colors of the design until we got the shades of blue, gray and white that we found ideal. In the end, I’m really glad we took the extra time to pinpoint those colors as it pulled the entire design together.

At this point I have to mention that Melodie and I work two completely different shifts. The time we see each other at Spoonflower is usually centered around the bi-monthly meeting where we stuff our faces and discuss the happenings of the Spoonflower community. When the contest and partners were announced at one of these meetings we quickly pulled together our idea but afterwards, we tended to work in parallel until it became crunch time. My main job was to put together the cardboard couch, whereas Melodie was largely responsible for the design, printing and sewing the couch cushions together.

Chad on making the couch: Let me preface this with one thing: I’d never built a couch before. My uncle made the now-famous Spoonflower color chip chair and has his own reupholstering business called Select Furniture in High Point, NC, and my father manufactures and sells large runs of fabric out of New Jersey. Both were channeled in the creation of this couch. Though I have no experience in furniture, I like to think that it’s in my blood, both from them and just from being a North Carolina native.

That being said, I did a fair amount of research on how I wanted to put this couch together. I started out by thinking of this basically as a piece of bamboo furniture, tough tubes of material pieced together with steel rods. With a kind of patio furniture feel, I felt like that was a pretty cool idea. I’d already been thinking about doing a project like this for some time and with the help of Melodie and some other friends, I really started to piece it together around the time that this project got announced. That was pretty good timing.

After collecting approximately forty cardboard tubes, I began to assemble the couch. At first, using tape to hold the pieces together, I created the legs and crossbeams to assemble the general frame. I added the beams that run along the bottom of the couch and figured out how I wanted the back of the couch to look. After feeling my way through how big the couch should be, I purchased some threaded rods to run through the support beams.

I’ll say right now that having the right tools for the job was critical for this project. Unfortunately I didn’t really have the right tools. Using a skill saw and a hack saw, I cut each cardboard tube to size as well as every steel rod. If I make another couch, it’s definitely going to be after I buy some new tools. I’m pretty sure I destroyed every hacksaw blade I had.

I pre-drilled all the holes for the steel rods to run through the tubes and once I got the basic frame together, it really started to look like it might work out. At this point I was still unsure if the tubes themselves would hold the weight of people sitting on it. The added support of the steel rods helped hold the couch together.

When the frame was done I added a layer of cut down tubes to the middle of the couch, then added another layer of support beams on top to create a place for the cushions to rest. This allows the cushion to be supported evenly across the entire couch and gave it a nice secure fit. I did the same thing for the back of the couch, using smaller carriage bolts to attach the beams to the back of the couch. Eventually I realized that I needed a middle leg to prevent the couch from sagging. I added these and the arms in a similar fashion, cutting larger tubes with holes in the middle to slide them along the supports and fixing them with carriage bolts. I did all of this over the course of about a week and a half. When I finally got the whole thing assembled, I took the whole couch apart, threw it in the back of my car and drove it up to Spoonflower to fit the cushions.

Chad on Sewing and Creating the Cushions: Like I mentioned earlier, my uncle has an upholstery business so I was fortunate to have access to his pillow and cushion maker. This definitely helped the project along, but we still had to create the cushion covers from our design.

Melodie on Sewing It All Up: This project was one of the largest I have ever tackled. Accuracy was of paramount importance, both in pattern placement and overall fit. Because of the large scale of the design, proper centering was a must. Additionally, accurate measurements were very important, as I wanted a crisp, clean look. To ensure accuracy, I placed the fabric over the cushion, and marked the corners of each side. Then, I measured each side of the cushion, adding an inch for seam allowance, and cut the fabric.

After all of the pieces were measured and cut, I lined up the right sides together, taking care to ensure that each pattern piece lined up with the design. I pinned them together, and then sewed each piece with a ½ inch seam. I double stitched each seam to prevent unravelling, but a serger would have been helpful on this step.

After all of the patterned pieces were sewn together, I took a plain white piece of linen the same size as the front of the cushion, and sewed it to the rest of the cushion cover on three sides. Then I put the cushion into the cover. With such a close fit, it took a bit of wriggling to get it on. Then, I whip-stitched the remaining side onto the cushion backs. We also plan to add some additional throw pillows and to install speakers into the couch arms in the near future.

Chad’s Closing: Well, that basically takes us to the end of the couch. I think the entire project turned out a lot better than either of us anticipated. Hopefully you’ll all think the same thing, and please, please vote as such. I know it’s not a unicorn but I think it’s just as magical, and a lot more practical

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 4: Transforming An Old Dresser With Fabric

March 9, 2012

This is the fourth in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

When Adam and I (Sarah) were presented with the Spoonflower staff challenge, we brainstormed a few different projects, but ultimately Adam came up with the brilliant idea to cover a dresser with fabric. This was inspired by Apartment Therapy and it’s a project that isn’t done very often. It was also a project that others could easily emulate to spruce up an old piece of furniture that would otherwise be on its way to the trash.

Adam, being the computer-design-savvy member of the team, came up with a bunch of great designs and, after tweaking the colors and sizes, we chose seven designs that would make it to the printing stage. We also decided to use our linen-cotton canvas because we loved the texture of it as a contrast to the smooth surface of the dresser.

After the designs were printed out, we again narrowed them down to five designs that we thought worked well together based on color and composition.

Next, we bought an old dresser off of Craigslist and got to work on its makeover!

I had previously done some research on how to attach the fabric to the wooden surface and found that Heat N' Bond Iron-On webbing was the best choice for the job. It can be found at craft stores, including Jo-Ann Fabric & Crafts, and costs about $2.99 per yard.

To cover the fronts of the drawers and the top of the dresser, we first made templates of each shape from pieces of poster board. Doing this first made it easier to get the shape right when ironing the fabric on to the dresser.

The next step was to cut out pieces of the Heat N' Bond webbing and the fabric. We used the template as a guide but made sure we cut out pieces that were slightly larger than the template.

We ironed the webbing to the fabric. The rough side of the webbing faces down onto the back of the fabric.

Then we used the template to cut out the exact shape we needed so the edges would be clean.

Next, we peeled off the paper liner on the back of the webbing and placed it down onto the dresser surface to be ironed flat.

And voila! An old dresser is transformed into a crafty new piece of furniture!

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 3: A Chevron Revolution

March 8, 2012

This is the third in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

Ta da! The Finished Sofa

We (Stephanie and Deron) decided to take on the task of transforming the couch in the Spoonflower conference room. The couch as it was was perfect for its use — plenty of seating for meetings — but lacking in Spoonflower fabric. If you’ve ever visited our offices, you may have noticed that we like to cover everything in fabric. Stephanie cried a little inside whenever she looked at it and would frequently try to convince others that they should recover it. This couch needed some Spoonflower life and color brought into it and the staff contest was a perfect excuse to fix it!

The Before: Bleh

The start of the project was a little rocky because we work completely opposite shifts and are never at Spoonflower at the same time. We worked out this issue with a couple of planning meetings at random hours. (Fact: Our design was finalized at 10 PM on a Thursday evening.) We knew from the outset that we wanted a design that flowed and covered the entire couch. We considered using the couch like a canvas — printing a huge nature photograph, for instance. In the end, we decided we liked the idea of an evolving pattern instead. The design elements on one side of the couch would be heavy and congested, then the elements would break off and become more and more open as your eye moved across the couch.

Fabric Printing

We created the five designs for the couch in Photoshop starting with a basic chevron shape and choosing colors and textures. Once we had our basic elements, we went about conquering each design which needed to flow from lots of chevrons to fewer and fewer with each design. The hardest part was when we realized the center cushion needed to be curved to trick the eye into seeing that the pattern was flowing across the couch. After some digging through Photoshop and some expert advice (thanks, Beth!) we used the shear filter.

We’ve included a bonus design of the chevrons in repeat without white showing just for fun, but we didn’t use this design on the couch.

Covering the L-Shaped Cushion

The sewing portion of this adventure went smoother than expected since part of the project included teaching Deron how to sew! He did a great job and knocked out all the pillows while Stephanie concentrated on the cushions. The biggest challenge was the large cushion that was in an “L” shape. It took some clever maneuvering and a ripped seam or two but, once that cushion was conquered, the rest was done assembly- line style, making sure that we grabbed the right fabric and checked the orientation with the couch before putting the finishing touches on each piece.

Deron’s Pillows

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