DIY simple upholstering project

Before I get started, I wanted to announce that the chosen name for that precious kitty is Murka.  It was suggested by M's mom and it is a common name for female cats in Russian speaking countries. It means something along the lines of "girl who purrs". At least that is what M says, and I guess I have to trust him on this one because I really like the name. You see, the cat is a purring machine, it just doesn't stop purring, so it is definitely fitting.

Next up is my first attempt at upholstering something! Remember that little stool that I wanted to pair up with my desk? (bottom photo). Well I finally got around it and here it goes.

You will need: a small stool, a pillow or pillow stuffing large enough to fit the stool, scissors, decorative buttons and fabric, a large needle, thread, upholstering tacks/nails and a hammer.

I took my needle and thread and marked the places where I would like my buttons to go, also tightened the threat with a little knot in order to make little dents on the pillow.

I cut the fabric so that it would cover one face of the pillow, and also go just over the edges of it. I held it on the pillow using pins, and proceeded to attach my buttons.

This is a Japanese fabric that I found on sale at the Beehive Gallery...

Then I placed the pillow, fabric side up, on the stool and measured the length of the edges. I started pushing some of those upholstering tacks through the fabric to mark where the edge should be.

Start hammering those suckers in! Always start with the center, and do edges first, leaving room around the corners, leave those for last.

I wanted the fabric to be nice and taught, but the pillow wasn't firm enough, so I just went meh... It fits nicely around the pillow, but it is not by any means taught... maybe next time I should stack up two of those pillows. NOTE: the tighter you make it, the harder it will be to keep the nails in place for hammering.

Then comes the corners... pardon my French but those corners were a bit#h. I took me a long time to figure out what to do, and I am still not really convinced that I did it correctly... I was learning as I went... but basically I tried pulling in the corner tight and folded it under the pillow. Then I brought what I had left over from the edges and tried to fold them nicely and around the corner.

I know it sounds complicated, to me it was, maybe a picture would help:

It is harder than it looks, trust me. Also, the corners came out all different, gives it away that this was a "craft" project.

And finally the end result!

The feet are not crooked, they are adjustable is all. This little gal was helping me all along and she wanted to be in the pictures:

So that's the stool :-)

While I was at it, I took some photos of our favorite part of the house. This is the mantle in our living room, all decked out with a Holiday tree and family photos.

Maybe one day I can show you the rest of our mess...