Skip to main content

Chair Rehab

I love my home office chair, which my guy gave me for my birthday back in the Jurassic era, I think. My dogs have always loved it too, which accounts for the hole at the front of the seat. It used to be covered in black vinyl, by the way. Many years and four dogs later, it's grown pretty shabby-looking. I've always wanted to recover it, so I decided to try making for it some custom slip covers (which, please note, I have never before made.)

Last year I picked up a few yards of an awesome VIP bamboo print from a vintage textile seller, and I've been saving it for something special. This fabric dates back to the 80's but is just as crisp and sturdy as if it had been made yesterday.

I didn't have a pattern to follow, so I just figured it out myself. I always save that crappy paper that stores wrap around glass objects before bagging them, which is almost as thin as pattern paper. Fitting it to the chair and trimming it was easy enough, and now I have a custom pattern to use if I want to make another set.

The finished chair. I added some extra padding to the seat from my stash of batting scraps, and used leftover mask-making elastic to gather the edges. It's not perfect, of course, but it looks much better, and I hope will help it last a few more years.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Make It Yourself

As we head into December, here are ten ideas for easy handmade gifts: Cookie Exchange: If you live close to your friends invite them over for a cookie exchange. Basically everyone bakes a set amount of their favorite cookies, and these are exchanged at the gathering by lottery, sharing a little from each batch with everyone, or however you want to do it. You can also exchange recipes, too. My neighbor did this once and it was wonderful. Favorite Recipe Cookbook : For my favorite person I found a copy of my favorite cookbook from a vintage bookseller (yes, I am that old) and went through it making notes on all the recipes I used, how I tweaked them, etc. Ornament: There are probably a million free tutorials on how to make your own holiday ornaments, so do some research online. I like to make hanging pomanders , which smell heavenly and are biodegradable after the holidays. Mug Rugs: If you sew, making up a set of mug rugs is simple and easy; I add these every year to my ...

Glorious. Kinda

Writing up my thoughts on the Chinese drama You are my Glory is going to be one of those head-scratchers; I liked it, it got annoying, I liked it anyway, it got more annoying. In the end I was left feeling like most of the last third of the series was smacking me on the nose for being a romantic and wishing, not for the first time, I was a screenwriter who could get hired to fix this script. Anyway, okay. The premise for this series is actually pretty good: poor but brilliant aerospace engineer Yu Tu (played by the fabulously handsome Yang Yang) crosses paths with fabulously wealth but not-too-bright actress Qiao Jingjing (portrayed by the genuinely pretty Dilraba Dilmurat) who was his high school classmate. He's looking for a new job that pays better; she's in hot water due to an inappropriate product endorsement snafu, and they end up spending a lot of time together. It's a cross between Notting Hill and Apollo Thirteen, sorta kinda. Yu Tu is in a life crisis ...

Fasten Your Seatbelt

Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds is an epic, dazzling film that hurls you into the Korean version of the afterlife while showcasing some of the most impressive special effects I've ever seen in any movie. The story begins with the death of firefighter Kim Ja-Hong (Cha Tae-hyun) who jumps out of a burning building with a child in his arms. The kid lives, but he dies at the scene. Two strangers inform him that he has passed away right on schedule, and toss him into a vortex that takes him to the world of the afterlife, where he meets his three guardians: Gang-rim (Ha Jung-woo), Haewonmak (Ju Ji-hoon) and Lee Deok-choon (Kim Hyang-gi). At the gates of the afterlife Ja-Hong learns that he is considered a paragon (an exemplary person who lived a noble and self-sacrificing life) and is eligible to be reincarnated -- but there's a catch. First he has 49 days to make it through seven hells in which he will be judged on his sins. His three guardians will help and defend...