It's A Sham.

For a chair. :)

In fact, this chair. Meet Poang:

And meet Cat #2. The furry, dimwitted kitty that loves this chair. Not because it's comfy. No. That's not why at all.

Apparently, Poang has a perfect combination of whatever kitties see as desirable when it comes to ripping apart furniture.

Case in point:

Yes. Lovely, isn't it? No, she's not declawed. I could go into my whole soapbox speech about why we shouldn't declaw cats. But. I'd be lying if I said the thought to get her declawed hadn't crossed my mind. Mulitple times.

But, that ship has sailed. Onto dealing with the chair.

I've been drooling over slipcovers from Bemz. But, my checking account hasn't. And while I would love one of those gorgeous slipcovers, I just can't fathom spending more than...let's say more than $25. I'm thrifty.

Thank goodness I can sew. I  got 2 yards of home decor fabric (on sale for 50% off. Score.) at the fabric store. Then I headed home and went about to making a slipcover sham for the chair.

First, if you are covering a Poang cushion, make sure you get 2 yards of home decor fabric that is 54" wide.

Cut off the lovely white ends so all you see is your beautiful fabric.

Next, fold the top (skinny) over about 3/4". Sew straight down to make one finished edge.

Yes, you'd probably use pins. But, pins hate me, and to be truthful, I'm not too fond of them either. :) They jab me unexpectedly. I forget about them and run over them with my sewing needle. No, pins and I do not get along. At. All. (Although I did have to use them later in the project.)

Now you'll want to cut your fabric in half, from top to bottom (skinny top. I have no idea how best to label this.), essentially making two 26" x 2 yards rectangles. Am I making any sense? If not, check out the picture below. :)

Alrighty. That's what one rectangle should look like. Now...here comes the "play it by ear and hope it works" part.

Take your cushion and lay it on the WRONG side of your fabric. Leave about 10" of fabric on the finished edge side. This will become the top part of the sham. Fold the fabric over.

Now, take the second rectangle, and place it on top of the cushion. Make sure finished edge is by the other finished edge. This will become the bottom part of the sham.

Starting to look like a pillow sham, isn't it?

Now you'll want to trim the bottom of the fabric. I left about 2 inches past the end of the cushion. Does that make any sense? I hope so because I failed to take pictures of this step.

Essentially I ended up with about 6" or so of excess fabric from one piece and about 18" excess from the other.

Next, you'll want to flip the rectangles over so they have the RIGHT sides together. Line up the bottom edge (not the sham edge) and pin. Yep, that's right, I said pin.

You'll end up sewing a square "U". The larger rectangle will be on the bottom, and it will be longer than the smaller rectangle. Make sure you line up the UNFINISHED bottom edge, not the finished edge. Start sewing at the finished edge of the short rectangle, and sew down from there. (This makes your square "U".)

Now, the next part is another cross your fingers and eyeball it. Slip the cushion into the cover, and fold the long edge of the cover over. I estimated where I needed to sew it over into a flap, and it ended up being about a 5" overlap over the short rectangle.

You are just going to sew the two sides from the fold down to the finished edge. You now have one long, rectangular sham, right?

Turn the sham so it is right side out. And begin the awkward task of trying to stuff your cushion into the sham. I don't know what is more difficult...this or trying to put a duvet comforter in. Haha.

But.

If my directions made any sense at all (I sure hope they did...if not, please ask!), you should end up with something like this:

It's not as fitted as the original slipcover. But...I like the way it looks casually comfortable. Dear Sweet Hubby was impressed. And Cat #2 can't quite figure out what happened.

It took me about an hour to do this, from start to finish. I really apologize for the semi-cruddy tutorial, but I hope it gives you an idea of the process. In summary, if you can make a pillow sham, you can make this slipcover. :) It was a lot of eyeballing and estimating, but I'm very happy with the results.