Imagine the Impossibilities Challenge: It's Done!

The final post is here - yay! Almost a month ago, I joined the Imagine the Impossibilities challenge. It was a push, and encouragement, to take on a project that challenged you, that either you've always wanted to do, put off for awhile, or that you were ready to jump into. This baby definitely took me a few weeks - a lot longer than expected - and certainly challenged my patience, motivation, and apparent upholstery skills. Check out the progress here: the beginning & the update. Below you'll find a fun photo trail of all the craziness that this bench became - fun times! I learned a lot (I should own a staple gun, I should take an upholstery class maybe, staple gunning is quite an arm workout, and piping is not easy without a sewing machine).

Heeeere we go!

In the beginning...

As far as I got on Day 1. I mean, she took FOUR hours to strip!

But oh! Those legs! Aren't they gorgeous?

Anotheer lesson learned: I probably shouldn't have done the seat first. True story. But it was easiest, in mny defense, and I wanted to be sure I could actually do the whole thing!

I'm thankful that as I've taken on these random upholstery projects that I learned to take apart pieces and use the old fabric as your pattern - genius.

I learned why white sewing pencils came in handy...

                                  

And am not ashamed that I started all the piping processes with a glue gun. It IS still my best friend, after all.

If you look at the update entry (see above), I hand-sewed the pieces that drape the arm (three separate pieces, including the piping) and the panels that cover the long length underneath the seats. That part definitely took me the longest, because I was so overwhelmed and intimidated by this project, that I worked on them for almost two weeks! Whew.

So as I came to the end of this baby, I decided I was over the piping - the black was just boring to look at, I kind of messed up the seams at the corners, otherwise I wouldn't have done the corner piping at all. But then I found scraps of the headboard I had made and decided that would be a little fun flair to add, and to boot, I could use that to wrap the corners without doing piping also! Win! What do you think?

I'm pretty happy with how these corners turned out. What do you think?

Ta-da!

And so you don't have to scroll back up to the top... here you have the before and after of this very, very tedious but oh so lovely project!



Black, faded, boring, and torn... to white, glossy, black and floral patterned!

PS. Once I finish re-arranging my bedroom, and therefore have room for this beauty at the foot of my bed,
I'll post another photo! Excited!