Clementine Crate Footstool Tutorial

Sorry about the lack of details in my last post! Here's the how-to if you'd like to make something like this:












Out of this!




By the way- I did this as a footstool for my living room, but I think this would be super cute as little kid seats or tea party "tuffets" as my girls are calling it!


Materials:

• Clementine Crate



• Foam



• Fabric (my crate required a 20" x 24" piece, not sure if all brands are the same size?)



• Dresser knobs, old finials, whatever you have on hand to act as feet!



• Fabric



• Trim



• Hot Glue



• Sewing Machine- Optional

• Lipped Piping- Optional

• Butter Knife- Optional
  

Step One: Trim foam pieces to fit the top and sides of your crate and hot glue them in place. Note- my pic below is incorrect! Learn from my msitake! If you use egg crate foam (like the blue foam in the pic below) glue it bumpy-side in! Otherwise the bumpy surface will show through your fabric. I pulled mine off and reglued it but I forgot to take another photo!

Step Two: Hot Glue or drill knobs onto the ends of the little posts on the crate to act as feet for your footstool. Spray paint them first if yours are all crazy mis-matched colors like mine! Sorry I forgot to get a photo of this step!







Step Three: Cover your crate in fabric. I used fabric leftover from my slipcovered coffee table project and I used my embroidery machine to add the "F". Just center your 20" x 24" fabric piece over your padded crate(measure your crate first to make sure this size is adequate since I'm not sure if all clementine crates are the exact same size!), make hospital corners just like making a bed or wrapping a gift and pin in place snugly.




If you're slightly less nuts than I am (Like crazy enough to try making a footstool out of garbage, but not crazy enough to put a whole afternoon into it!) You can hot glue the raw edges of the fabric to the inside of the crate, take the pins out, hot glue some trim around the bottom and call it a day. But if "you are just my brand of crazy" (sweet words spoken to me by my Boogie when we realized we were falling for each other!) then here are a few more steps for you...







Step Four: Top stitch the four corners in place on your sewing machine and slip your little cover onto your padded crate.





Step Five: Tuck the raw edges under making them level with the sides (not the posts) of the box. Hot glue purchased lipped piping just under the folded-under edge of the fabric.





Step Six: Measure the perimeter of your padded crate and multiply by 3. That's the length of fabric you'll need if you want to make the little knife-edge pleated ruffle at the bottom. Piece together a strip of fabric 2" wide by (perimeter times 3) for the length. Make sense? Turn under about 1/8" hem with your fingers while feeding the strip through your sewing machine (I could have used more width and turned it under twice, but then I would have had to press in place first and that just seemed like way to much effort for this little project.) Then, using a butter knife as a guide, pleat the hemmed strip around the knife and use little dots of hot glue to hold the pleats in place. You could certainly pin and stitch the pleats in place, but I wanted this project done before Puxatawney Phil rears his head again, so I opted for glue.





Step Seven: Hot glue the raw edge of the pleated trim under the edge of the piping.

You're Done!!





Love,