It’s true, Tim Burton 0wnz stripes. Nearly every one of his stories features black and white stripes, and the moment I saw this black and gray fabric (for $2 a yard in the bargain area of Joann) my heart sang "Burton!". The only quandry was what to make? Thankfully, I bought the rest of the bolt of fabric and had enough to make a slipcover, as well as some spooky skirts.

For those of you without sewing skills, don’t be daunted! Slipcovers are right up there with curtains, skill wise. Just cut out a big old piece of fabric the size of your intended cushion (adding about 2″ around all the edges for seams), and hem up the edges. Rather than opt for true slipcovers to go over my couch cushions, I bought a 1" tall piece of foam (price note below) and created a cover for that instead. Just a few lines of stitching, lots of ironing (I double folded all the seams so there wouldn’t be any exposed edges), and then hammering the pearl snaps onto the back. Right now there are only 6 pearl snaps holding it together, but it works just fine.You can only see the foam if I pull the back forward to show the snaps (see pic #3).

I learned two important lessons while doing this project. First, foam is effing expensive. Like $7 a yard at Joann, which is why I used my handy 40% coupon from their mailing list. Secondly, foam has magical clinging powers. It wanted to grab onto the fabric so bad that it took a lot of coercion to get the fabric to lay perfectly flat against the foam. Well worth the price and effort, though, especially since I used this all year round for over 2 years!

Tim Burton has created some fantastical spooky goodies over the years, and many of them would compliment this slipcover nicely. Just a few of my faves are below: