Fitted fabric-covered footstool

I have big, squishy couches, and my feet don’t really reach the ground when I sit on them. There’s a coffee table, but it’s not very comfy. So I like having a little foot stool to rest my feet on. On an earlier stool I made a few years ago, I used a little pillow as cushioning, but the foam in this project feels much better and also looks crisper. Rather than just folding and stapling, this project makes small seams on the corners to make it really look nice.

Supplies

(Click fabrics for direct links for purchase at Warehouse Fabrics Inc.)

Hopper Camel - HORCAL

Foot stool + paint, if needed

2" thick foam

Heavy duty staple gun

Batting
I got my unpainted foot stool at Michael’s. I spray painted it brown. My stool top measured 10.75″ square. 

You’ll need a piece of home dec weight fabric (see below for calculations), a 2″ thick piece of foam the size of the top of your stool and a heavy duty staple gun and staples. You’ll also need a piece of batting as big as your piece of fabric.

The pattern

I came across a foot stool I liked at Running With Scissors. What I liked is that she didn’t just fold and staple, but rather she did a bit of sewing at the corners to fit it to the stool and foam. It looked so much nicer that I had to try it. But I got a little confused in a few places, so I decided to remake the tutorial here. It could have just been that I was having one of those days, since I was also thoroughly confused on a personal project I was making. But let’s see what I can do.

The process

A few years ago, I hurriedly made this little stool. I got it at Hobby Lobby and it tips over really easily just from the pressure of resting my feet on it. I like the four legs on my new stool much better, both for looks and use. 

For this stool on the left, I used a small pillow (instead of foam) and some of our Circles Topaz fabric. I love the fabric, but I hate how sloppily I made this. I just stapled the fabric willy-nilly and the pillow was too puffy.

OK, so onto this project, I first spray painted my stool with a dark brown paint. You can obviously use any color of paint or stain. My garage is a disaster right now, so I used the can I was actually able to get to. Isn’t that sad? Then I kept leaving my stool out to dry and forgetting about it. It would get rained on and then I’d have to paint it again. You know how often it rains in New Mexico? Never. So how this kept happening, I don’t know. Maybe if I left my projects outside more often, we wouldn’t be in a drought. I could single-handedly save the region through crafting! 

Anyway … trace the top of your stool onto your foam. You may want to place it in a corner so you only have to cut two sides of the foam. I used a serrated kitchen knife to saw it.

Now you’ll need a piece of batting. Make sure it’s big enough to wrap around and staple to the bottom of the stool. Now go ahead and do that. Trim it so it wraps around yet doesn’t butt up against the legs of the stool. You’ll be sandwiching the foam between the batting and the stool.
I determined the size of my fabric by setting the stool on top and drawing around the top of the stool. Then I pulled the fabric around to the bottom of the stool and cut it so that it reached around to the legs of the stool. Of course, I didn’t cut haphazardly; I got an idea for the size and then measured out from the center square I traced.
 

If your stool is a different size, just use the same concept to figure out your fabric size. I think this is where I had trouble on the Running With Scissors tutorial. I couldn’t find where it said how to get your fabric size, and then that was going to affect whether I got the same measurements she did (since my stool was the same size). Somehow I did seem to end up with the same size of fabric, accidentally. Maybe this part was on her tutorial and I couldn’t find it?

 

Here’s where I show you my mad Photoshop skills. I can draw a line! And not even a straight one! And I can add text. But that’s all I can do. I can’t even take a picture of a square and have it straight. 

So that black square in the center is the outline of my stool top, which was  10-3/4″ (or insert your measurement).  The blue lines represent the center points on each edge (fold in half and mark). From those blue center lines, mark 5-3/8″ on either side. Since my fabric was 20-3/4″ long on each side, then the from that mark to the corner is 5″.

On the Running With Scissors site, she explains what she’s doing. She wanted the corner seams to angle up just a little as you go from the stool to the top of the foam. So she made the corner a little bit curved. She wanted the top edge of each side of her stool to be 3/4″ less than the edge along the wood. That is why the green corner is shaped funny. You might have thought that it was my lack of ability to draw a straight line with Photoshop, but it’s supposed to look like that. 

You could use similar measurements for your stool if it’s different. In other words, you want the corner seam to start closer to the corner edge and work in just a touch.


With right sides together, sew your slightly curved seam on each corner.
It will look like this.
Try it on for fit. You can leave it inside-out.
If satisfied with all of your corners, trim off the big triangle. You could finish your edges along the seams and bottom with a serger, but I didn’t bother. This part will be hidden anyway.
Turn right-side out and staple the bottom edge to the underside of the stool. Ta-da! Nice and neat looking, and comfortable, too!

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