Wooden Stool Makeover

This little wooden stool has been around a long time.  We got it second hand when we moved to the US over 7 years ago and who knows how old it was at that point.  It never really "matched" anything or even itself, but it didn't really matter since I'm pretty much of a "make do" kind of gal.  Living overseas will do that to you!

Before - cute little nondescript stool

We recently got a new couch, so I decided to revisit the stool situation.  I had a gray chevron decorator weight fabric that someone had given me a while back.  It was perfect for the new look of the living room and does in fact "match" the couch and the freshly painted walls.  There is enough left over to recover 2 couch pillows.

So here is my stool makeover.

Take out the nails or staples and remove the old fabric and batting layers.  This was so old it had upholstery tacks.  I remember my mother using them oh so long ago.  There was the maroon layer, a taped-on batting layer and what I suspect was the original layer.

Lots of layers

Probably the original cushion with a hand sewn detail.

You can almost see where the hand sewn stitches go through all the layers. 

This was so old it had a straw-like material as stuffing which was then covered in the lining, batting, top combination which was all sewn together by the decorative details.

Straw-like padding, lining, batting and fabric layers.

I didn't bother to keep the old fabric as a pattern, but I did air out and save the wooden base piece to be reused.

I was able to use the scraps of the super thick batting from the recent Carpenter's Star quilt as the new padding for the stool.  I used 4 layers.  I did not wrap the batting around the wooden base.  The base had cut out corners and I figured it wouldn't make that much difference in comfort as opposed to a lot more work in fitting the corners.

Finicky corners!

The hardest part was making sure the chevron lines were straight.  It was a printed design so I had to cut it not squared to the original lay of the fabric, but squared to the chevrons.

So glad I had a staple gun and didn't have to reuse the tacks.

I centered the fabric, stapled on one long side, wrapped it tightly and stapled the other.

Then I cut out the batting from the corners and stapled the short ends of the fabric.

Lastly was fitting the corners.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.  I just made sure it was all even and consistent for each corner.

After - statement piece!

Voila!  Love it.