Simply Curious

This bears investigating.

A few years ago, Brian, in a fit of creativity, built a storage ottoman out of plywood. He wanted it padded and covered in navy blue canvas, with a big padded lid. We accomplished both, eventually, but a slight miscalculation led to the bottom of the ottoman slightly wider all around than the lid. (he forgot to allow for padding in the dimensions between the lid and the box.) Another miscalculation in the thickness of the foam padding for the lid meant that it was too tall to comfortably use when sitting on the sofa. We ended up buying a leather ottoman for that spot, and the poor blue ottoman was banished to odd corners of the house.

I felt bad. I WANTED to make it work and look good, so I sat and thought about how I could go about fixing it without taking the thing apart. I finally came up with a cover, somewhat like a tablecloth, out of a heavy enough fabric that it would fall evenly over the lid to the edges of the box. Coming up with a proper look took a little longer, but I decided to make it look like a map, and rim the edges with a ropelike trim. I set about looking for the right kind of fabric. The closest I could find was almost perfect, except for the fact that it was emblazoned with words like "Tommy Bahama" and "Couch Potato Bay" and suchlike. So I turned to the next best thing and bought plain tannish canvas fabric. I'll draw my OWN map on it.

Mom and I got the cover made, and it works! The ottoman looks, well, normal. I just need to decorate it now. Fun new creative project!



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