24 September, 2014

my chair

After finally writing a post tonight (see below) I found this half written post in my drafts that I never published; I think I was waiting to finish the project.  Well, I haven't yet, so I will post this as it is:

So remember this chair?  This is a chair we inherited in NYC back in 2001 .  Our landlord had got rid of the "valuable furniture" from his newly deceased mother's house and told us to get rid of anything else we didn't want to good will.  We still have 3 pieces of furniture for that time. This is one of them.  I absolutely love this chair.  I had TOTALLY forgotten that we had it; that we'd put it in to storage, and that when we got our stuff out of storage that this was part of it.  However, it needs some repairs.  And while I have become quite good at restoring and recovering furniture over the last few years, I just don't have access to the same sort of supplies here.  This one will have to wait.

So I decided to patch this chair for now.  I have, over the years,  seen really gorgeous chair patching on the web and on pinterest, but when I went to look for pictures and inspiration I couldn't find ANYTHING!!!

So I decided to make a kind of how to patch tutorial: 
I know the photos aren't great, but they sort of go through the process.  I use a curved upholstery needle and regular double threaded cotton and just stitch into the fold.
 I've been using safety pins to get the fabric nice and tight. and the folds how I want them.
 I also snip into the inside corners to make them sit flatter.



 I chose a dark green velvet for the seat (It was thinner than the fabric used for the arms and I thought it would be more comfortable to sit on as the fold wouldn't be as noticeable).
 On the arms I used the same upholstery fabric as I used on 3 different chairs that are in our house in VT.  I love this fabric and it looks gorgeous on the arms of the chair, once I stitched them nice and tight.  I thought I had taken photos of that process, but apparently not; once I get into it I forget.

I love the effect (although in all honesty I have only had time to finish one arm.  Things really are crazy busy at work (and Matt leaves for the UK and NYC for 2 weeks tonight) and I am just fighting to keep on top of things. I need an early night, a good night's sleep and to be about 3 more weeks into the future  when things will hopefully settle down.

2 comments:

  1. ahhhhh dying to see it finished!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, good to have a project - it's such a lovely shape! Hope your work has settled down a bit! xxxx

    ReplyDelete

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