Way back in June, Ava and I started building an L-shaped couch for our living room. We built the frame, glued on a layer of memory foam, wrapped the whole thing in cotton batting, started sewing the upholstery, and then – ran out of fabric. Since it was some fancy stuff we’d ordered on eBay, we couldn’t just run out and buy more… and by the time the new order arrived, the summer art project season had gotten under way and the couch project landed on the back burner.

Yesterday we both had a day free, so we decided it was time to get this piece of furniture done. We finished cutting out the upholstery pieces, then I got to work sewing them together while Ava turned a piece of plywood into an elliptical, notched backboard and covered it in foam. Once the upholstery was done we wrapped the bench and stapled the fabric down – hundreds of staples, very sore wrists.

We ran out of steam before finishing the back piece, but the chair is done enough to sit on now, and it looks as nice as we’d hoped it would. Ava picked out the fabric, and while I raised an eyebrow at the idea of buying $35/yard upholstery fabric sight-unseen over the Internet, I’m really glad she stuck with the idea because the result looks great.