Monday, August 4, 2008

Furniture for 'A' New House

When Aline moved into her new pad, I suggested to make her a piece of furniture ... a comfy new bean bag. So we went fabric hunting and settled on a tough and slightly stretchable jeans fabric. I thought up a pattern in my head (after checking out my own bean bag) and just marked away and snipped.
I laid out the fabric and traced a 1m diameter semi-circle, for the bottom of the bean bag.
Offset the outline by 3cm and cut.
I checked out the circumference of the 1m diameter circle and divided it by 4. works out to be about 78.8cm width for each side piece. The pattern I drew was a pointed arch, sides parallel for about 75cm and arching towards the middle. Again, I added 3cm offset on all sides. And cut 4 side pieces.With all the pieces cut out, I stitched the 2 semi-circles together along the straight side, lightly. I parted it down by ironing, and hand-sewn the zipper in place.
Inside and Outside.Here, I pinned both flaps down so I can neatly sew it through the sewing machine without worrying about accidental overlaps. Changed to a presser foot for zippers and sewed down both sides .
After that, I opened the light stitch for the zipper and picked out all the loose threads. There, we have the bottom.
I sewed the sides panels together, from the sides up to the arch, leaving the 78cm width to be attached to the bottom. I knotted the threads together, and again.
To secure it even more, I decided to hand-sew all of the points (at the arch) together.
Here I pinned the bottom (circle) piece in place to all the side panels.
Satisfied that it's all in place, I sewed along the circumference of the bottom piece, attaching the bottom with the top.
Viola! Brought it to Aline's new house and filled it with polystyrene balls she brought back from her recent trip and decided it should need more. She said she didn't imagine it to be that big, but now she has a lover's couch! Without any other couch at her house, her prospects will have to share this bean bag with her.

1 comment:

stitchie said...

you are getting at this! =D