Well...here I am, nearly a YEAR later and I am just making a new post. There have been so many projects that have come through this house over the past 3 seasons....your normal variety of holidays, the trappings of daily life of work and family, sadness and loss, and much, much happiness.
The biggest accomplishments as of late have been the redoing of my bedroom with paint, paint, and more paint and the use of many reclaimed "goodies" from the thrift shops. Amazing at the little things you can find that people just toss away. Of course, shifting through the junk isn't always a fun thing. That whole proverbial idea of having to kiss a lot of frogs...yeah it pertains to thrifting too!
I also recovered a chair that belonged to my grandmother - Ma, as she was known to everyone, my dad's mom. Anyway, the chair as I remembered it was a white leather...vinyl...leather...vyn...heck I don't know what it was, but it was white! AND SOOOOOO COMFORTABLE. We always fight over who could sit it in. Amazing the memories a chaise lounge chair can conjour! It was given to my dad when Ma passed away. For some reason, it was in storage and was ruined. Mildewed and stained beyond cleaning! So my dad had it recovered for my mom...and momma hated it...well daddy agreed...the recovering changed the whole feel of it and it wasn't the comfortable chair it once was. So it sat in the room with that awful Pepto pink/mauve color and became a catch-all cat bed. So back into storage it went, this time better storage, more air tight and weather-proof.
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I asked them if I could have it. It was a no brainer, of course I could - they knew I could probably do something to it. I already bought the material before it came to my house! I found a sale for upholstery fabric (Holy Canoli!!! What is the deal with that???? That stuff can be up to $79 a yard?!?!? Mine was $23 a yard and a sale and a frequent customer coupon got it down to $8 a yard! Whew!)
And the project began. I researched on the internet (of course, I did!) about the best way to do it. I didn't simply want to cover it like a slipcover - would have been perfect in the new "cottage" style room, but I wanted a more finished look. SO I began ripping...that was fun. Seriously. I enjoyed that...UNTIL..until the discovery of the 81, 003 staples AND the abundance of dust mites. Yeah, I ripped the back off and WHAMMO...it hit. This huge nasty dust cloud of nasty little dust mites. (And that's all I say about that, onto the funner stuff! LOL!)
I finally returned to the project a few days later and began piecing it back together. I admit, I did not rip off the seat cover, I figured it would at least help me with the cushion formation. I worked and worked with the top and arms. So the covering goes in this sequence...arms, seat, back, and skirt. I had planned to do just the skirt, but then when I got it done, I liked the classiness of the blue toile enough to say maybe it didn't need a skirt. Then I thought that maybe it would be "softer", dare I say it...more feminine (sometimes that word scares me as I equate it to dainty and I am sure not dainty! LOL!). So, the skirt began. It was probably the most tedious work, as I had to hem and iron the hems and sides. However, the look was quite polished!
When the folks saw pictures, they were amazed. (ooh props for Trace!) They were very pleased with it and thought the skirt was some great feat....not, although it was tedious to iron and sew to get the hem straight, it stapled right on easily and the "pleats" were the easiest part of it.
So I guess mission accomplished. I am still a bit unsure about the arms....one tucks down like it should, and the other rather tucks to the back...it is getting easier to look at, but it is certainly something that I will make a point to work on should I tackle another chair. (which may be soon as my uncle has a chair he wants recovered...sigh)
