Transforming a child's rocker

Three years ago when we moved here, a lady from church gave us this little rocker for our children. Her grandchildren had outgrown it and she thought our kids might get some more use out of it. Of course, my kids thought this was the neatest thing.


There was one problem - it didn't match any room in my house. Not one! So it got shoved into corners here and there as we rearranged rooms.

Then my husband got the idea for me to re-cover the cushions in John Deere fabric leftover from the quilt, so it would match our son's room. That's a great idea ... but when was I going to get the time to do it?

Well, since I had the sewing machine out today and had just finished sewing all the hems to my daughter's tent that I had pinned last night, my husband figured I must be done sewing tents for the day. :) So he brought this out and said, "Sometime maybe you could do this chair." I knew that meant, "Could you please do it now? Pretty please?" And since he was so kind in helping out around the house while I did it, well, I went ahead and did it! It was a piece of cake.

I also sewed that little pillow on it, as well as a (much) larger pillow for my son's bed.

So, what do you think? A huge improvement, right? It will look great in his room now, and we just made some room for it last night.

Oh, but wait. My sister would know I wasn't "telling all" if I didn't tell you that I was ready to throw away my sewing machine until around 2:00 this afternoon. You see, somehow the bobbin casing [the black plastic part that actually holds the bobbin] had come out last night when I tried to sew on that Velcro.

Would you believe that I have misplaced the manual for my sewing machine? It's probably in a box at my parents' house - a box I have not touched in the nearly six years I've been married. As a result, I had no visuals of how to put it back in. I'm mostly a visual and hands-on learner. So I messed with it for hours trying to force it into a spot it was never meant to go into.

To make a long story short, I called my sister and quizzed her at length about what hers looks like (it's somewhat similar to my machine). Fortunately she mentioned just the right things, and I was finally able to get it back in working order, with some help from my husband. I have the best sister (and husband)!!