Recovering dining room chair cushion (tutorial)

I am soooo loving my new (inexpensive, yard sale find) dining room table and chairs.  I am still working on the chairs.  I am now to the 're-doing the cushion' part of the chairs. Strap on your seat belts, and here we go!!
     The first thing we have to do is remove the cushion from the chair.  Turn the chair over and look at the bottom. You should see some screws at each corner or thereabouts. My chair had four straight slot screws which I promptly removed with my trusty kitchen knife.  With the screws gone, the cushion should just fall out.
The cushion consist of 1 piece of board, a piece of foam, and 1 to several old fabric/vinyl pieces that were used to recover the seat in the past.  If you look on the bottom wood part of the cushion you will see where they attached the fabric with nails, staples, or tacks of some type.  My chair had small tacks, which I removed and recycled.  Remove whatever was used to attach the previous seat cover.  Use this piece as a template or pattern to cut your seat covering to the correct size.
     To attach the new seat cover, lay the fabric face down on a table or, in my case, the floor.  Place the seat, cushion side down, in the center of the fabric.  On one side of the seat, wrap fabric over the edge and put two are three tacks. I used the original tacks that I removed from the seat. Leave about 3" from the corner. Stretch the fabric taut and do the same to the opposite side. Secure fabric to all four sides, working directly across from each side.
    Now for the corners.  Take the corner piece of fabric and stretch it across the corner of the seat until it is snug. Tack that piece. Now smooth the side, folding the fabric over th piece you just tacked making a smooth fold. Tack this piece. Do the same to the other side of the same corner.  Continue this way until all corners are done.  Your seat should be done. If there are loose places, put extra tacks for added hold.  Replace chair to it original position and screw back into place. Woot Woot! Your seat is done!! Happy dance!!
     Pictures to come.

My 'new' dining room table and chairs

I just love good yard sale finds.  I am always trolling yard sales for what many other people would call junk.  Honestly, much of the time junk is what I end up dragging home.  I get excited, I buy, then I go home and think, what in the world possessed me to buy that???? I mean who needs other peoples used, broken, and damaged junk?  I can answer that question with one word. ME!!!! It helps that I have a handy dandy repairman at me beck and call.  Okay, more like my beg and call.
  The summer before last, yes it actually was that long ago, I found an old dining room table with four chairs.  They were asking $25 for the set, which I would have gladly paid except for the fact that I am a complete cheapskate. I offered them $15 for it and they agreed.  In absolute euphoria, I called hubby to bring the truck for an emergency pick up.  Since I was on my way to work, I gave hubby the directions, informed the yard sale attendants, and went on my way.  My day was bright and all was well with the world...   until I got home...
    The short drive home from work seemed to take forever. I was dying to examine my newest purchase.  I also wanted to call my friends and family to brag about the awesome dining set I got for a steal. Hey, I am only human.  Everyone loves to claim their right to brag at some point.  As I am stroking and rubbing my newest project, my darling hubby walks in looking supremely smug.  It was obvious he was gloating. It seems when he arrived to pick up my table and chairs, the person I talked to had stepped away for a moment.  My hubby talk to another person who was unaware of the previous agreement to sell the set for $15.  They sold it to him for $10.   Hence the reason for his disgustingly happy attitude. Now, most wives would be happy, and even proud. Not me. It irked me to no end that he got a better price for it than me.  There went all my bragging rights.  I am glad that we got it for such a great price, I am just irritated that I wasn't the one to make the awesome deal.
     Now that I have that part of the story out of the way, let's refinish this puppy!!!  Unfortunately, I do not have 'before' pictures of the table, but here is one of the chairs.  As you can see it is painted brown and has and ugly green vinyl covered seat cushion.  Loving the shabby chic look, I decided to try my hand at refinishing it to look attractively old.  (Is that an actual description??) Here's what the chair looked like before I executed my own particular brand of magic on it.  okay, maybe not magic, bit I am quite pleased with the  results.
   The first thing was to remove the chair cushion, which I did by removing the four straight slot screws from the underside. There was a lot of dirt and crud where the seat had been, so I took a good stiff brush and cleaned the area real good.  I then painted the chair with several coats of flat white paint.  I used leftover flat ceiling paint and an old low quality paint brush. I didn't thin the paint and the old paint brush left super high brush strokes which remained after the paint had dried. The chair had to be thoroughly and completely covered with the paint because at some point in the restoration, I would be sanding it and I didn't want to sand through the white paint.  I made sure to paint in the same direction with each coat of paint so that the brush strokes were the same every time.  After I had the chair painted with as  many layers as I thought I would need, I decided to put a wood stain on it. I know this sound weird, but my philosophy was this: If it is ugly I can re-do it.  I mean, it was only $10, right??
     So as I said, I decided to stain the painted chair.  I used Minwax brand stain in English Chestnut.  I stained the chair in the same direction I painted it.  To my utter amazement, the stain pooled into the grooves of the brush strokes and actually looked like wood grain. I stained heavier with some strokes and lighter with others until I had what looked like and stained bare wood chair.  In case it escaped the readers notice, I believe I mentioned that I like the shabby chic look.  Unfortunately for me, brand new beautiful stained wood chair is NOT shabby chic.  I was a bit put out with the results.  It looked like brand new stained oak. UGH!! I did what any self respecting junk lover would do. I brought out my secret weapon. SANDPAPER!  Yeah, baby! Let's see, whatchu got now!!!
     I sanded the entire chair until there was a pretty good bit of white showing through.  Then I sanded more heavily in the areas that would receive more use and be more worn under normal circumstances.  Ex. corners, edges, middle of the back...
   After I got the look I wanted, I wiped off the dust from sanding and put a coat of Minwax Polycrylic for a nice shiny finish.  I put about three good coats.  Here is the finished product.  As you may have noticed, I have recovered the seat.  I am in the process of making a tutorial on refinishing the seats. I hope to have it done within the next coupla days.
     I don't have before pictures of my table, but it turned out wonderful, too. I am so pleased with the results.

Making plarn

Today I will be making 'plarn'. No, I didn't make this one up. :) Plarn is the product you get when you cut plastic grocery bags into strips to be used as yarn. Plarn is made in the same way as Sharn only you don't have to stretch it before you connect the loops together.  Here is a plarn tutorial.

http://www.myrecycledbags.com/2007/02/17/instructions-for-cutting-plastic-bags-creating-recycled-plastic-yarn/

I have friends and family members saving their plastic shopping bags for me to turn into plarn. I made an awesome plarn shopping bag.  The whole 'shopping at Aldi's' thing from a previous post if you remember.  It turned out great, and so roomy.  People are asking me to make them one.  It takes 50 or  more bags to make one plarn bag.  I doubt I will be making very many plarn bags unless I get donations. I surely don't shop enough to get enough plastic bags in my own.

Jami's Camo hat

Today was a play date with my sis-in-law.  We went to this sweet little place called Rumor's Deli.  I had a Mouth of the South Combo, Jami had a Scoop Combo, and Cheryl had a 1/2 Mouth of the South Combo, Wyatt, my little one, ate a hot dog. The food was just too good!  They also have a coffee bar. I could so live there!! I love me some cappuccino and latte!!

    I just couldn't spend the day in town without stopping by one of my most favoritest stores. Hobby Lobby, even the name sounds fun. I could stay there all day.  There were a few things that I needed and a ton of things that I wanted.  Of course, it was necessary to gaze longingly at a great number of things, which I did, quite happily, too.  Wyatt needed some supplies for his arts and craft projects for school.  I picked out the material for my curtains and bed spread. This is the first time I left the store without purchasing any yarn. ~sigh~ I must be sick.  I didn't even buy a hook, although I looked real hard at a size N hook.  In the end, I put it back and left empty handed.

   Since we had a busy day planned, I decided to do a quick project that could be finished in an hour or so.  I had a skein of Red Heart Camo yarn laying around, so I snatched that puppy up, and got to work.  I modified the pattern from my baby hat I posted a few days ago to fit Jami.  In less than an hour she had a new Camo beanie.  She opted to wear it for our day out.  Looking cute in it, too!

An actual, true life conversation!

Hubby: I want a regular baseball cap. 

Me: I can't crochet a baseball cap (eye roll) 


Son: Chuck Norris could crochet a baseball cap. 


Me: I'd like to see Chuck Norris crocheting a baseball cap 


Hubby: Chuck Norris doesn't crochet, he scares the yarn into a baseball cap.


hahahahaha!

Pom-pom Hat pattern

I have made several of these hats.  I started out by making each of my two daughters one with big ol' huge pompoms on them.

This hat was made out of the black homespun yarn for my oldest daughter pictured on the right.  It is very soft and the pompoms are huge. I still need to trim the pompoms on this one.

My daughter who is quite the princess fell in love with the style and texture.  She is away at school and we miss her terribly.  She called me the minute she received it, and was thrilled with the gift. I doubt it will get hot enough in Texas to need the hat, but she is all about fashion statements. I am sure she will find and occasion to wear it! Can massage therapist wear ear flap hats to work?



I made another hat out of wool ease chunky yarn for my youngest daughter. She is a bit of a tomboy, loves horses, and working with her hands.  She was happy as can be with her hat.  This girl can be tough as nails and still as pretty as a flower.  How do they do that??

Allow a proud Momma a moment to brag.  I honestly believe I have two of the sweetest and prettiest southern belles around, and I'll kick the teeth out of anyone who disagrees!!!


Here is the free pattern for the Pom-pom hat.   http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/chs-pomhat.html I love the Lion Brand website.  If you can't view this pattern, it is because you are not a member. It doesn't cost anything to become a member. Once you do, you have access the hundreds of great patterns. Win win situation!

Crochet shopping bag

I love to recycle and to change things from their regular form into something fun and useful.  I was really torn over what I was gonna do with my sharn.  I had the idea to make a floor rug, but the main colors my son wears are red, blue, and white.  I really didn't want a bicentennial rug.

Since I shop at Aldi's, a market bag is a much better and more useful object for me. Whoo-hoo! Look at me! I am going green.  I love Aldi's.  They have wicked cheap prices. I have only two problems with them.  One, I have to bring my own shopping bags. I am always forgeting them. The other problem is I am alway forgetting my quarter for the shopping buggy.  I just realized, (dawn of awareness) it isn't Aldi's, it is me! I am forgetful. Ugh! I hate revelations.  Back to my shopping bag.

So, now, I have written the pattern for my bag. Unfortunately, it isn't user friendly, yet.  It desperately needs some fine tuning.  Hopefully, I will post it in a day or two. I have just had another 'dawn of awareness'. I stink at pattern writing. I'm sure there isn't a person it the world that can read and understand my bag pattern!