I’ve mentioned before that my sewing skills are limited, but over time, I’ve been challenging myself to take on more intermediate sewing projects – this was certainly one of them.  I confess, I’ve admired the slipcovers across blogland for a long time, but this is my first attempt at slipcovering a piece of furniture myself.  After four days of piecing it together, bit by bit, I’m pretty satisfied with my new summer linen slipcover. 

Lovely readers, meet my little settee and her pretty new linen slipcover. 

Before:

After:

There were several reasons why I chose linen.  One, what’s not to love, because I absolutely looooooove linen.  Okay, okay, so it wrinkles if you breathe on it, but the piece underneath is so tailored, I knew it would work if I could just keep my seams tight enough.  Two, linen is classic, and oh so French, so that completely appeals to me. 

First, I prewashed the linen, then I cut my fabric into pieces and started to pin it all around.  It took me for-eh-ver to get this right.  You have to pin your slipcover inside out, sew your seam, keep your linen tight (but not too tight!) the entire time, then flip it right side out and try it on your piece to make sure your seams are straight. 

Over. And over.  And over again. 

Sheeesh, sewing a slipcover is challenging – my seamripper and I were BFFs this past week. 

So after I sewed all the parts in place to satisfaction, I added a pleat at the bottom.  Gotta have the crisp pleat !  I folded my fabric strips over and stitched them together.  Then I pressed them with an iron to get the crisp edge, then slowly created the pleat with my sewing machine. 

Next, I pinned the pleat to the edges, and attached with my sewing machine.  Finally, I hand stitched the edges of the arms since I didn’t want to bother with the perfection of the perfect circular edges on the arm rest.  Works for me ! 

So here she is, ain’t she sweet ?   My first real slipcover !

I love the flirty pleat next to the traditional dark wood leg. 

Oooohhhh, and there’s a sneaky peek at the completed wainscoting, now finished in the living room, plus we installed a new mirror and light fixtures.  

4 yards of linen on sale at $7.50 a yard = $30 for the slipcover, woo hoo !

I saved some cash by not reupholstering it, so I splurged on this pillow cover perfection from Pottery Barn.   

LOVE. 

More pics of the living room upgrades to follow later this week !   But for now, I’m loving my summer linen slipcover.  Bliss ! 

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