It seems to be color week in the crafty blogging world. I pondered what I had that was yellow for yesterday and couldn’t come up with anything until… I was shocked to check my email and realize that I sold my first handmade offering on Etsy. Since today’s color theme is blue/turquoise, here it is! With some yellow thrown in for yesterday, which I missed. This tote bag has all of these colors!

So I spent the morning getting it ready to ship. It was very fun knowing it was going to someone who wanted it, and also a little sad to let one of my creations go. Silly, I know. So I know that I should really be cool and casual about the whole thing, but well I don’t think I care about being the snooty professional I would have aspired to be a few years ago. Right now, I am just tickled. Here it is all folded up with tags.

And I had fun making labels for the mailing envelope. Don’t they look cute.

I was a little sad when the post office clerk put big swatches of clear tape over them. C’est la vie! I need to get some more stuff up in my shop. I have a few things just waiting to be finished and photographed. Anyone else feel this way about that first sale?

Almost! I am finished for now. I am going to keep my eyes open for two more yards of cording in the right color, but since the back is up against the wall, I don’t have to worry about it until I find a color that will work. Then the last two skirt panels will go on quickly. So I am trying to not be too much of perfectionist about the whole thing. I am trying to ignore the fact that I didn’t pull the fabric tight enough when I did the arms. It was too late to do anything about it by the time I realized it. So I learned the hard way that if you think you are stretching the fabric tight enough, your not. You have to pull it just a little bit tighter. Next time I will use a canvas stretching pliers to get a good grip on the fabric and pull it tighter. But, I am excited that I got it done in a week and it didn’t turn into another really long project. So here she is:

I also thought I would answer some of Sarah’s questions from the comments on the last post. I think the biggest factor that gave me the idea that I could do this was watching my mom reupholster a chair when I was in junior high. I’m not sure if I would have been so convinced I could do it if I hadn’t seen it done. I also bought a book about six years ago that has really great pictures. Our library also has quite a few upholstery books and the more pictures you see, the less scary it seems. I haven’t done a sofa before, but I did do a chair that was reasonably successful for it being the first time. I also would shop with my mom and hear her comments on what to look for when picking furniture to reupholster. Make sure that it doesn’t have any weird odors unless you are ready to commit to stripping it all the way down to the frame and replacing all the foam and batting. This will make a project significantly more expensive and it might not be worth it. Also anything with a lot of buttons and tufting is going to be complicated. And since I like clean lines with furniture I was never tempted to reupholster one of those puffy lazy boy style sofas that are pretty popular. I think those would be difficult. The main thing is that you learn how to put a piece of furniture back together by taking it apart. Being able to take pictures with a digital camera makes a huge difference. There were a lot of times that I just had to go back to the pictures and study them again. You think you will remember it all, but it is such a long process that there are just too many details to keep track of. I guess if you did it all the time, you wouldn’t need the reference like I do. I was amazed how many times I was about to put something back together and realized there was a significant detail that I had completely missed. Studying the pictures, let me find what I missed. If I had been relying on my own notes and drawings, I wouldn’t have had anything to go back to in order to find the part I had not been paying attention to while I was taking it apart.

Here is my cost break down on this project. :

Sofa = Free!!
12 yards of Red Fabric @ $1.00/yd (lucky break!) = $12.00
19 yards of Cording @ $0.78/yd (Joann’s 40% off coupon) = $14.82
10 yards of Cardboard strip @ $0.20/yd = $2.00
8 yards of Muslin @ $0.60/yd (Joann’s 40% off coupon) = $4.80
1 Queen size quilt batting + 3 yds (on sale for 50% off) =$10.00
2 boxes of staples @ $2.00 each = $4.00
GRAND TOTAL: $47.62

Okay, so I am a freak when it comes to buying stuff as cheap as possible. Looks like my splurge on cording is what took me past my ridiculous goal of doing this project for $30. But cording is such a pain to make and with a project this big it seemed like quite a reasonable expense. You can get staple guns for as little as $7.00 if you can’t borrow one. I hope to borrow my dad’s power stapler the next time I do this. I have a few more pictures it would be fun to post, so watch for those coming soon.