Nursery Glider Makeover Part 1

Have I mentioned yet my sweet brother-in-law and his adorable fiance are going to have the cutest most precious baby in the whole world (okay-I may be a little biased here).  One thing I told them was I wanted to get them a rocker for the nursery.  I would take care of it.  I'm here to tell you folks...rockers are expensive.  I'm not even joking.  I had no idea.  Apparently the inexpensive pressboard ones start at $99-120 and it only goes up from there.  Of course I went and started looking at the baby stores, and then the furniture stores.  The ones I picked out were always the "cadillac" models and ran $600+.  No thank you.  I love them, and little Maddie, but I don't have that kind of money.

So then I turned to blogland for some ideas because it seems a lot of people are having babies right now.  Most of what I found were people who had rockers just painting them, and putting the cushions back on, or adding more foam to the rocker for comfort.  Now we were heading in the right direction.  I decided to start looking on craigslist for gliders (rocking chairs?...I dunno).  I looked for weeks.  WEEKS.  Then, I found it.  Solid oak.  It looked like it had good bones, but the fabric was less than attractive.  Especially for a baby girl's room, but I had the internet and I could certainly figure out how to reupholster the fabric right?

I already had a fabric in mind, it is beautiful...

Look at how pretty it is!  Brown and cream and bunnies and sheep!  How perfect for the nursery (the nursery is shades of brown and cream and pink with beautiful creamy white furniture). PERFECT.  I bought all of the fabric HL had....3 yds and change.  It was on a roll.  It was amazing.  Well, this fabric has sat on its roll for a couple months because of school.  Then earlier in January, I realized we had about 6 weeks left until this baby was going to get here.  I had to get on the ball.  I started with the cushions.  I removed the back cushion and pulled it apart.

EXCELLENT glider-perfect for the nursery. 

Here is the fabric that was on the cushions...ick. 

So I began by taking all of the old fabric off the back and bottom cushions.  The back cushion was like a big pillow and the bottom was a form form.  Both had the little dimples sewn into the cushions (I have totally forgotten what they are called-).  

I took my hem-puller-outer and my scissors and began to take all the stitching out. 

Then I got:

and finally some help....

I tried not to totally destroy the original fabric so I could use it as a pattern.  I was pretty confidant in making the back pillow, so that is what the rest of this post is about, trust me, I was overwhelmed trying to figure out what exactly I was doing....  This back part was a big pillow with some fancy attachments, so I could manage that first.  

I used some white material my mommy gave me (a whole bolt) to make a "form" for the back.  The idea is to make "forms" with "covers" that can be removed and washed when they get dirty.  I know babies throw up and manage to poop or tinkle in places outside their diapers (its a mystery how it happens-).  

I laid the material out, and traced around it, and made two pieces.  I stuffed and sewed them up to make one big pillow:

Once it was all stuffed, I just closed it up and smoothed out the stuffing.  I did add another bag (or two) because pillows lose their "fluff" with more use, and I'm planning on this getting a lot of use.  ;) 

The next thing was to make the cover for this gigantic pillow.  So, the first thing I needed to do was to make sure I loops for the pillow to attach to the chair.  The original pillow only had two, but I decided this huge pillow needed two more to bring the total to four. 

I folded some strips of fabric that were about 2 inches wide.  I folded the insides in and sewed them up to make long strips then made the loops and sewed them into place.  Phew.  Step one accomplished.  

I had cut the shape of the pillow out of the fabric, pinned it in place and added the loops at appropriate intervals to fit on the chair. 

Once it is sewn together, and flipped right side out, you get this:

Like I said I wanted to make this be a cover that can be removed and washed when needed, so I left the bottom completely open.  I ironed some folds in and attached some brown ribbon on either side and then stitched it together so the ribbon was now part of the cover.  

Then, when you flip it right side out and put the pillow in:

OKAY.  So thats all for now.  I'll add another post about the bottom cushion and the frame this week. 

Thanks for visiting!

p.s. I'm linking up to these great parties: