The Nursery: Chapter 8 {an upgraded ottoman}

Yes! More Nursery! It has been completed, my baby is 3 1/2 weeks old, but I wanted to squeeze in a few posts about a couple of other projects before I wrap it up.

My glider is a big, comfy, heavenly at 3'oclock in the morning kind of glider, but I knew I would not have the room to get an ottoman with equal proportions. So when I was about 7 months pregnant I found this little guy on sale at a TJ Maxx for $25.

I knew the ivory damask would not go. But I already liked the idea of slipcovering something so that it would be washable, so I bought it. I waited until the chair arrived to make the slipcover, and I'm glad I did, because the ottoman actually sat a few inches lower than I preferred. So I went to Home Depot and had them cut one of the long, square dow type pieces into 4, 4" lengths.

I used to talk about solo women getting special treatment in the Home Depot lumber department (i.e. 20 cuts on the big saw for free) but pregnant women trump that by a billion. If you have been in the lumber section of Home Depot you know they have a hand saw out so that people can cut these types of small pieces themselves. Well, my 9 month pregnant self was not up for cutting anything and thankfully one of the workers bent the rules and ran it down the table saw for me. I wood glued them to the existing legs like so...

My inspiration for the slipcover was this Serena and Lilly pillow.

So I started by covering the ottoman with this blue and white striped fabric.

I wanted the letter to be on a solid background, like the pillow. So I decided to center a solid blue circle. I used a pot lid as a template, which actually turned out to be a really cool picture. You can pretty much see the entire room plus our hallway, and my huge pregnant belly. I went into labor that night.

I attached both the circle and the letter with paper backed wonder under. The paper backed is great because it was very easy to both draw and cut out the letter. I just enlarged a lower case "r" in New Courier font, traced it, cut it out, and ironed it on. Ta-Da!

I decided to leave off the dot. It did not work as well inside of the circle as it does on the pillow above.

But I really like the way it turned out, it might even be my favorite thing in the room.