Cat sitting

This week my friend Heather brought over a lovely little Ikea table that had been languishing in her garage for me to use as a kitchen table. Zulu immediately adopted the table and has been pretending that he is some sort of Kitty Kaiju, destroying the shadow of neo-Tokyo. Apparently this game is super exciting.

 

The table is great, but one of the chairs has some stains that Heather swears are from her son's Spaghetti-O's. So while I am waiting for the floor to dry and making sure that Zulu doesn't lick off the filler, I decided to work on covering them.

 

I bought some nice outdoor fabric at Joann from their close out section. Originally I had planned to make those removable seat cushion things that your grandmother has. I wound up deciding against this, in favour of recovering the seats completely. I've never done this before, so we'll be winging it.

 

Step one: remove the cat from the table. Rob tried telling Zulu that "tables are for cups, not butts." He swore up and down that his parents used to say this to him, but that he thought it rhymed. Then he remembered it was "glasses, not asses."

 

 



Step Two: Remove the seats from the chairs. This meant unscrewing four screws, and was pretty easy. You can see the Spaghetti-O remnants.

 

 

 

Step Three: See step one.

 

Step Four: Repeat step one, again. Maybe try luring him way with food this time.

 

 
 

Step Five: I traced around the edges of the seat using a sharpie. The fabric is folded double, so this should result in two seat covers. I started over once, because I realized I hadn't really lined up the pattern very well at first.

 

 

 

Step Six: Add an inch and a half to the traced pattern.  I added marks for this every six or so inches all around and didn't bother cutting the little cut outs for the corners. The shadows keep coming and going, because I'm in Seattle and the weather changes every two seconds. It's raining now.

 

 

Step Seven: Wow, that food trick worked pretty well. I connected the dots using a level for a straight-edge, because it was handy. (I keep the level in the liquor cabinet because it makes me laugh. It's totally straight-edge.)

 

Step Eight: I cut along the super-straight lines 

 



 

Step Nine: I set the seat on the fabric...

 

...And started stapling it around the edges. As I did this, I realized that the weave of the fabric is fairly loose and the edges are probably going to fray.

 

Step Nine Redux: I hopped in my time machine and went back to just after step eight, and instead of just attaching the fabric and putting fray check on it, I ran it through my serger. This should keep it from fraying too badly. I may also have stepped on a butterfly or two. 

 

Step Ten: Reattaching the seat to the chair. The only parts that show are the corners, because I didn't cut out the little notches. I'm not too worried that anyone but my mother will be checking under the chair though, so I don't really care.

 

End result: Ta-da! Fancy Seat. The corners are a little wonky, but again... don't care.

 

My lovely assistant also approved of the new covers.

 

 

After I had rinsed and repeated for the other chair, I found I had a lot of excess fabric. Initially I had picked up three yards so that I could make cushions and/or slip covers for the whole chair. So I used the excess to make:

 A Tablecloth

 

A table runner (I'm not sure what these do, exactly, but I think it makes my table look like some sort of religious officiate. If I ever get married, I hope the table performs the ceremony.

 

And some placemats and napkins. All of these need to be pressed and hemmed badly, but for ten minutes of work I sure have a lot of table coverings now. I may be giving them away as party favours soon.