Use coffee cans to create a non-slip footstool.
Non-slip footstools can be created using commonly recycled products found around the house. Coffee cans, newspaper, and rubber drawer lining are a few of the required materials to make a charming, flower-shaped footstool. If you don’t have coffee cans, ask at churches, schools, restaurants or recycling centers. A non-slip footstool can be made masculine by covering in faux leather or denim; and it can be made feminine by using luscious satins and replacing gimp braid with gathered lace. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Place the lids on the cans. Place one can on a flat surface and put the other six cans around the first one. Hold them in place by wrapping masking tape around the outside of the cans.
2. Put the taped cans on top of a sheet of newspaper. Draw around the bottom of the cans with a pencil. Measure six inches out from the can outline and trace a circle. This is the pattern for the footstool’s cushion.
3. Cover the taped cans with fabric.
Measure the length of the cans from top to bottom and add two inches, giving you the length of fabric required. Measure around the taped cans, including all dips caused by the rounded cans, and add two inches, giving you the width of the fabric required.
4. Cut a rectangle according to the measurements in Step 3.
5. Fold one short edge under 1/2 inch and glue onto one can. Start wherever you wish. This is the footstool’s cover seam. You can use self-adhesive paper cut to the fabric requirements.
6. Glue the fabric around the cans using the glue gun. When you get to the raw end of the fabric, fold it under 1 1/2 inches and glue.
7. Tie rattail between each "flower petal" of the footstool, knotting over the can tops. Squirt glue beneath the rattail to affix to the fabric. Omit this step if you used decorative paper.
8. Place footstool on a sheet of newspaper. Trace around and cut out.
9. Place two pieces of rubberized drawer liner in the width of the footstool side by side. Tape together and place the pattern from Step 8 over the drawer liner. Cut around.
10. Glue the cut pieces beneath the footstool.
11. Use the footstool cushion pattern from Step 2 to cut a circle from the cushion fabric.
12. Use rubberized drawer liner to create a non-slip footstool bottom.
Fold the edge of the circle under one inch against the wrong side of the fabric. Glue the circle’s folded edge to the top of the non-slip footstool along the stool edge, leaving a four-inch opening for stuffing.
13. Stuff the cushion through the opening. Fold opening edge under, gluing into place. Glue braid around the outside edge of the cushion.
Tags: non-slip footstool, drawer liner, taped cans, around outside, cans with, coffee cans