Mixing Chairs and Fabrics

As a follow up to my last post on Rescued Chairs I wanted to share the arm chairs that I plan to use with the group. All of these will be used at our summer cottage.

I purchased a pair of wicker chairs at an estate sale and made the cushions for the seats.

I started by using a piece of newspaper to make a pattern.

Next I transferred the pattern to the fiber filler for the insert.

I traced around the pattern with a marker.

Next I used an electric knife to trim the insert. Notice that this is a fiber insert which is sold as an alternative to foam.  I bought one yard of this at JoAnns because after I used a coupon it was was more affordable than two pieces of foam. It took the clerk quite a while to cut the material with a pair of scissors. As you can see by looking closely at the photo above, it was very difficult to cut, even with the electric knife. I also used the electric knife to cut another 4” thick cushion for another project with no problems whatsoever. The foam cuts very easily with the electric knife.Thus, I would not recommend this product due to difficulty cutting!

I used the same pattern for my fabric but added 1 1/2 inches to all sides to allow for the thickness of the filler and the seam allowance. Then I stitched it up on the sewing machine.

Now I have a pair of arm chairs to use with other chairs. I chose to coordinate the fabric rather than matching the other chairs.

I love the color combination. I showed a photo of several coordinated pieces of fabric in a previous post.

All of these are chair fabrics at our summer cottage.

The first chair on the left will be used at the downstairs dining table and can be used upstairs when I need extra seating.  The second chair on the left is used as additional seating upstairs. You can read about those chairs by clicking here. The third chair from the left is one of the dining chairs from upstairs. You can read about that dining set by clicking here. Then the last chair can be used with the downstairs dining chairs or as additional seating upstairs. That sounds like a lot of chairs but it is actually a total of 14 and because we do all of our summer entertaining here we quite often need extra chairs. Let’s take a closer look.

While the fabrics are not all the same color, they are all in the same color family and work together very well.  You can click here to take a tour of our summer cottage.

I also finished another major major project this week. I’m not doing a tutorial or even sharing a lot of pictures because this is not typical DIY blog material but I wanted to give a peak of what I have been doing with my time.

The fiberglass base to one of our showers developed a crack! When I called the repair guy I was told that the material could not be repaired because it was too thin! He said that the entire base would have to be torn out and replaced with another base or with tile and that the labor alone would be more than $1000!! I decided to tackle the job myself. It took my several hours to tear out the bottom two rows of wall tile and cut out the fiberglass shower base. I decided to reposition the drain while I was at it! I spent hours doing research to learn how to make a concrete pre-slope, install a rubber membrane, then build the sloping concrete base for the tile. Finally I laid the new floor tile. I forgot to mention that I had to remove the glass shower door then re-install it in the end. My husband did help me re-install the shower door as it was impossible to do with just two hands! It took me several weeks to finish this project but it is finally complete and turned out very well. The final cost was less than $150 so it was quite a savings but involved a lot of sweat and hard work.

Hope you are having a productive week!

I’ll be sharing with Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style and to Grace At Home at Imparting Grace.