Part 1 left off with me just about to throw the ottoman away and go to the fabric store and pay out the Wazoo for new one that someone else had to upholster. I had to step away from it for a few days to gather my thoughts and allow my fingers to heal from all the splinters the stupid wood shards left (reference to Part 1).
The rest of the construction was pretty easy. The reason it took so long to wrap up was a result of my own procrastination. I last left off with all the fabric pieces cut and ready to sew. I had already sewn the top piece for the ottoman and had it fitted and lookin' fly.
The next step was I just added some batting to the large button on top and wrapped it with fabric; affixing it with simple hot glue.
Then I made cording - yards and yards and yards of it! I used the same method for making the cording that I did in the Part 3 of Reupholstering Dining Room Chairs. I'm not going to even lie to you - the cording makes the ottoman, but it was what made this project over the top difficult. My one helpful suggestion for making cording is to switch over to a zipper foot on your sewing machine to not only make the cording, but also to sew it to the fabric. I had never done that before and it made a world of difference.
Making cording is easy, it was the sewing of the cording to the circle shaped fabric near the top that proved so difficult and time consuming. I had to go over it about 5 times to make sure it was sewn close enough together so that no stitching could be seen.
The cording at the bottom of the piece I just hot glued on. I tried stapling it into the ottoman's lovely cardboard bottom - but I just couldn't get it to look right. Glue gun was the way to go for this one! All of the sewing was the time suck for this project. The stripping, cutting fabric, and recovering took about an hour of time - but I spent probably 3-4 hours on the sewing (including mistakes and redos).
To finish it up I slipped the cover onto the skeleton structure and had to close by hand the hole I left to slip the button on top through. Then pulled the cover down, flipped the whole thing upside down, and pulled and stapled and was done! After that I tightened the strings to pull the button on top more taught and glued the last cording on and was finally done.
The ottoman turned out pretty darned well. For all the trouble, it was actually worth it and such a great learning experience for me. I've recovered seats on chairs before, but never anything of this magnitude. Taking on a project like this is such a great way for me to excercise my brain. You never know what's going to happen when you rip off that old fabric, that's for sure. And it's such a feeling of accomplishment when you think it out and weigh the options and come up with a positive result!
It looks great in Evelyn's big girl room and I'm about to start making More cording for the chair that the ottoman is going with. I hope to be able to post about that tomorrow.
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