Bargain Garden Arbour

We have been wanting a garden seat to go in place of the children's trampoline and had thought about making one, I posted an idea from another blog where someone had used three dining chairs.  Well we had been looking and found that the price of decent second hand chairs was quite steep considering we would be taking bits of them apart, we also didn't see any suitable.  We may have been impatient but my husband had been looking on eBay and saw a nice bench and arbour that some one had started to paint and then got fed up with.  He bought it for £80, the guy even delivered it for us as they lived just in the next town.

  My husband spent the best part of the day painting it yesterday and we decided to leave off the back panel as we like the way you can see the bushes through the back. Here it is finished...

The total cost was £95 if you factor in the paint, I think it looks great and he has done a lovely job.  The people who were selling it were moving house and had decided it was one job too many to finish it up.  That was good news for us though as these are quite expensive when they are new.

This one here from Wickes that comes pre painted is £300 so I think that is a good saving.

Re-upholster A Desk Chair for £5 or Less Tutorial

Today I finally got round to making over my sewing table chair that has been annoying me for ages.  I bought the fabric at Ikea last year then folded it up and put it in my fabric box to work on later, well later turned out to be much later! So I thought I would show step by step what I did,  I know there will be people out there who are professionals at this who shake their heads and say that is not how to do it.  Well I did it the way that I thought was quickest and easiest and any body who wants to have a go at giving a chair a new lease of life should be able to follow what I did. I hope.
Here is my uninspiring swivel chair..

Now this is a perfectly good chair and sure lots of people have one like this, maybe in a child's bedroom or by the computer table, but sometimes we want things to co-ordinate and the one you have may not go with your new colour scheme. That is what I thought about mine, and I would always rather do something up if I can.   The first thing I did was to lay the fabric on the chair seat, the direction that I wanted the pattern to go facing the right way.

Then pin all the way around the seat and cut out the fabric allowing a seam allowance just beyond your pins.

Next drape the fabric over the back of the chair so that it hangs down to the seat at the front but down further at the back, again pin around the top of the seat back and cut around leaving a seam allowance, then cut up the sides so it looks even at both sides you can usually tell by eye but if you are not sure even it up when you take it off. 

Next you need to cut a long rectangle that will act as a skirt around the bottom, measure around from where the fabric hangs down at the back all the way around the seat to the other side where the fabric hangs down from the back.  To be safe cut it out a bit longer than you think.  make it as deep as you like, the same goes for the back of the chair.  I've done mine so that it covers the adjustable bit under the chair but some people might want it to the floor.  Pin it around so that you know you are happy with it and you can make any alterations to it, if you have pinned accurately and cut your rectangle evenly it should all be level. 

Put a pin at the centre back of the seat and the centre seat so that when you lift it off to sew you can match them up, you could use tailors chalk. 

Pin your rectangle down the overhang bit at the back of the chair with right sides together, this way you will have one piece of the jigsaw in place.  Now you need to carefully remove your pins from the back of the seat and seat, move them to the wrong side of the fabric if you need a guide, or make small notches while it is all still on the chair so you can match the notches. 

Lift it all off, sew the seat piece to the back seat piece first matching those pins at centre back.  When you have done this sew the two back pieces all the way around and down the sides but remember there will be a bit at the bottom that hangs down about 6-8inch where you will sew the skirt on, if you pinned it at one side like I said  then it will already be on one side to remind you.

Snip all around any curves this will make it lie better once it has been finished.

Sew the skirt all around the bottom of the seat and down those back bits you will need to do a little turn to go down the back.  When you have done this hem all the way around the bottom I did a double fold.

Now give it all a good press.

I think it looks much better than it did before, although on this picture I have just noticed I've got a bit of fabric tucked in at the top in my eagerness to put it on the chair and take a photo, ha!  It did poke out. I have covered chairs like this before as I did some dining chairs once so it not only works on desk chairs.  You could make a mock up first if you don't want to use your best material.  Also you could use quilting padding on the reverse of the fabric to give it a bit more structure or if it is more comfy furniture you are doing, for a living room for example. I used that when I did the dining chairs, but for this chair it was just a quick makeover needed.

If you find it is a bit loose at the back you can add a little pleat with a few hand stitches like this..

You can also do this at the sides if you want but I didn't, so there it is a chair made over for an hour or so and £5, I used one meter of the Ikea fabric and there is a bit left.  here is the barcode if anyone wants to see if they still have it..

Of course you could use old curtains or maybe pick up a sheet at the charity shop so it may cost you nothing at all.  It is a good way to get a new look on the cheap.

                   Before                                                                                                    After

I like the way it looks and I hope it has given somebody an idea of what they can do with little or no money to change the look of a piece of furniture.

Kitchen cupboards makeover and some bargains

I thought I'd share a few of this weeks money saving bits that we have managed.  They did involve spending a bit of money but in all they have saved us quite a lot.  Firstly my husband came home last week with these fabulous bargains from the Tesco. They are selling off Christmas stock as they do at this time of year but I never quite understand why as they will be selling all the same stuff again next year.  Four rolls of wrapping parer at 10p a roll, three packs of Christmas cards and a pack of Christmas napkins, again all at 10p each.

Not bad for 80p, so now I just need to put them somewhere safe so I can find them easily later in the year. 

The next thing we did is to finally get around to changing the handles on my kitchen cupboards, I've never liked them and we have lived here six years but as I liked the cupboards I just kept putting off ordering any. Well this week I decided they were going and I found ones I liked on eBay at a pound a piece. My husband went one better and found them elsewhere at 80p each (there's that magic number again) so we ordered them. We needed 26 but my husband ordered 30 just in case we need spares.  He put them on in no time and I think it has transformed the cupboards.

These are the offending handles

Here are the shiny new ones

Now I'm not sure if I want to change the tiles later, they are ok but I would have chose something plain or a pale colour but not beige! Brilliant white or very pale aqua and none of the embossed tile bits. Any thought anyone?

I finished the book thief and it was amazing it had me in tears, I'm currently reading two books one with my son which is Ketchup clouds and he picked it up from the teen section and has now decided it has inappropriate bits in it (I agree) but we want to know what happened with the main character so I'm editing it as I read. (ha,ha).  I'm also reading The Woman in Black the sequel by Martyne Waites.

I just picked this up at the library and it is yet more WW2 stuff at the start so i hope I won't be all emotional at the end of this one, but if the original is anything to go on it's more of an eerie tale than a sad one.

Not a lot of sewing this week but I have altered some curtains for someone so that has brought in a little extra but as my little dog still has his sore itchy eyes (he is still at the vets every week) that little bit extra will probably be going to the vet along with a bit more.  

Handmade roller blind

I have caught up on a few things this last week. The first thing is I have been meaning to replace the roller blind in the bathroom for a while now and I had the fabric but I just hadn't got around to it.  I bought the fabric earlier in the year from IKEA for £5 pounds which I didn't think was too bad and it's quite a heavy fabric for curtains or upholstery. I took the one down from the bathroom and just removed the fabric from the roller. I then took out the panel from the bottom that makes it hang straight, I laid it out on the fabric and cut a piece allowing for a hem up each side and a channel for the plastic panel at the bottom and hemmed. This really took no time at all so I don't know why I have left it so long.  My husband then got his electric stapler and stapled the fabric to the original roller blind tube. ( If you don't have one of these you could go with my original idea of strong fabric glue, or there are quite strong tapes now that even hold up pictures!)
We put it up and it has transformed the window. Sorry the picture is dark, these dark nights mean that if you don't get time in the daylight you have no chance of a good picture.  I think the orange goes well with the mosaic in my tiles ( sorry you can't see this in the picture)

Now I know you may look and think well shouldn't the birds be the other way? Well you may be right but because of the width of the fabric this way it fitted with the  meter I bought and of course I don't mind.  The mechanism in the blind still works perfectly well and it means I have a new blind for a fiver in just the fabric I wanted.

The other thing I caught up was some more cushions for the living room. I showed a few some weeks ago but this is ongoing as I wanted to replace all of them.  I have done two more using up my fabrics and charity shop pillow cases etc. They are both different designs as I like them to look random. Unfortunately again the picture was taken in the evening so it does not do the colours justice.  

If you look at the cushion with the heart in the center you can see a bit of the cherry vintage fabric that I made someone a dress with a number of weeks ago.  I like to use up all the little bits. 

The old caravan makeover

I recently spoke about our caravan holidays and how they are a great way to get away without spending a fortune. well I would like to share the makeover we did on our previous caravan with you. it was a four berth marauder and we got it about four years ago, my husband had been wanting a caravan for a while as he always loved the caravan holidays he had with his family as a child and his parents had one.  I wasn't too keen at first and one of the main reasons was the initial outlay for equipment and all the accessories, I also wasn't sure if it was for me but after some persuasion we decided to have a look on ebay.  We looked at loads and the main thing that put me off at first was the interior of a lot of the caravans, I didn't want to spend too much but I also didn't want to holiday in something that I though was ugly.  We decided that the best thing to do was look for one with cupboards that I could live with as the seating, curtains and flooring we could change.  We found the Marauder which was in good condition and put in a maximum bid of £900 and got it. Here is what it looked like when it arrived.

Now it wasn't bad but what you cant see from the picture is that the seating is a really washed out blue and pink and with two dogs that dark blue carpet was not practical as I would need a washable floor. The units were good though and not too dated being a light colour with simple silver handles. Here is the other end of the van.

I decided to re-do all the seating so took off all the cushions and went to Dunelm Mill and managed to get some fabric I liked in the reduced rolls. I made fitted covers then hand stitched each one to the seats so they wouldn't move about I also covered all the fabric buttons and my husband made me a gadget to push the button through the cushion so they looked professional. This made the cushions look much more fitted.  We discovered a bit of damp so my husband opened the front wall and replaced some of the board and trim and also put down a laminate floor with some left over from our previous house.  This had been stored in our garage( glad we kept it now!).  I then papered the wall around the window as the board had been replaced. Looking back on these photos I'm quite sad we let it go as we put a lot of time into it and had lots of cheap holidays but my older son needed a bit more room to sleep and the bunks in this one were quite narrow.

Here it is after its makeover.

I decided to keep the curtains as they were in good condition and went with the colour scheme. After 3 years of holidays in it and getting away about 5 times a year we resold it on ebay for £1100, the man who bought it was very pleased with it and it was just for him and his wife. The caravan we have now is a five berth and a bit younger and at the moment we haven't made any changes but we may do at some point if needed. I think part of the Marauders charm for me was that we made it our own.