Natalie asked about my slipcovers in the comments below. Following the Valerie Principle, I'm making a new post. And anyway, I happened to have another pic.
Natalie, the slipcover on the big couch is one I bought with a gift certificate some friends gave me.
On the small couch, I have a length of white denim draped across the bottom half and tucked a little bit, and the back is covered with an old quilt. That's actually the backside of a full-size quilt my grandmother made, but the patches on the top are worn thin and falling apart. I hated to throw it away and kept it for years, trying to think of a use for it, and then hit on this.
I try to keep the edges of the denim tucked under, but as you see, it does come untucked. It's not too much trouble, though. I wash it once every month or two, spray it with Scotchgard and throw it back on. The quilt doesn't have to be washed but about once a year, since it's not actually being sat on.
Now, slipcovers for clever people. ;-) I've thought about sewing slipcovers, and checked out this video on making them from the library, and it seems a pretty straightfoward process. It showed how to measure the furniture and mark, cut, and sew the fabric. The only thing that required more than basic sewing skills was making piping to sew into the seams, which gives it a more professional look, but isn't really necessary. If you can't get the video from your library and don't want to buy it, you could try this pattern. It's the same info, but I found seeing it done on the video to be much more helpful than reading the direcions in the pattern, plus the video teacher shows you cool shortcuts, like a very simple way to make the miles of bias fabric you need for the piping.
But even though I already have the fabric, I haven't done it yet because it looks like it will be a pretty long project and I'm, um, just not clever enough right now. :-p
HTH
)
Pictured here is a farmhouse from Ulster, Ireland. When we visited, a kind woman was sitting by the front door of this cottage doing her needle work. She showed us the lace she was knitting on tiny wooden needles that had been carved by her husband, and she asked our eldest daughter, who was five at the time, how old she was. On hearing her age, the woman told her that if she'd been living on this farm two hundred years before, by five years of age she would have been responsible for knitting all the family socks. Fascinated by this, Elai wanted to learn how to knit. Looking back on it, the most useful thing I learned from the trip is how little meaningful work there is for small children to do when you buy everything you need ready-made. We're finally (mercy, it's been twelve years now!) learning to knit and crochet some things, most notably hats and dishrags, but I'd like to add socks to our repertoire.
alluring
