New fantastic Beatiful calfs: Lessons learned and project complete

This is the story of a chair. A chair I wanted to recover and renew...

... the original title of the post was going to be "You too can recover a chair!" I have very enthusiastic ideas most of the time. I chronicled the journey of the chair with pictures, so you could duplicate this process, but now I have better advice.

The actual title of the post should be "Never try and recover a chair." Unless you want to sacrifice your sanity. Then I would totally recommend it.

I've had the chair for about 3 years and it is super comfortable. It rocks and swivels and is perfect for nursing babies. In the past I threw a sheet over it because peach isn't my favorite color. I decided to finally recover the chair by making a slip cover for it. The nursery room design is coming together and I thought that this would be the motivation I needed to finally do something with the chair. The room is going to be browns and greens with elephants, so I found some coordinating fabric and asked my wonderful seamstress grandma to come over and help me with the project.

When I say seamstress, I am not exaggerating or merely just describing. Grammy used to actually be a seamstress and she made crazy things like suit jackets and wedding dresses, not to mention reupholstering furniture and sewing countless custom draperies for the homes she decorated. She is amazingly talented and she thinks that I am too. Bless her heart.

We began by fitting the chair with muslin to make pattern pieces. We marked each dart, yes I said dart, and used about 14,000 straight pens. It took us about 3 hours to just fit the top and one arm of the chair. Slowly I began to realize this wasn't a one-afternoon project and perhaps the sheet draping thing wasn't too bad of an idea after all.

Grammy left and gave me basic instructions on how to finish the chair: carefully take out the 14,000 pins, sew the darts where marked, then sew the pieces together and make adjustments to the fit, take apart the seams and use the muslin for the pattern pieces on the real fabric. Then sew the entire thing all over again with the real fabric.

Sounds easy enough. I really want to go all "1994" on you and say, "NOT!"

I think it would have been a lot of hard work without real life rearing in at ever turn....

Laundry and children wanting attention were just a few of the distractions that presented themselves while the chair sat wearing muslin and 14,000 straight pins in the dining room. The baby above is also teething 4 eye teeth, 3 out and 1 to go. And the little child pictured above finally decided to give up her afternoon nap. Life is change, but next week would have been much better timing for these events in my opinion.

Back to sewing darts and fitting fabric. I found the soft, green upholstery fabric at Joann's on clearance and bought all they had for $20. What a deal, not figuring in any time or frustrations. The chair is actually now worth $15,480. Perhaps I should sell it on Craig's List now that it is finished.

I am not thrilled with the way I neglected my responsibilities while I tried to finish the project. I got angry easily when little hands began rapidly taking out the 14,000 straight pins. And things like a toddler wearing all 5 of her sister's swim suits didn't register as cute, only annoying (until the day was through I looked at this picture).

I live to learn and this is the kind of thing I will not be repeating until my children are grown and gone. Maybe one of them will go to reupholstery school and they'll do this kind of thing for me. In hind site, I would give the chair away to a good home and say, "Happy rocking, I hope you like peach" and then I would borrow the glider-rocker that wouldn't match, but is free, at my parent's house.

In the future I will give myself more realistic goals for projects and take the time, before I am at the end of my sanity, to keep up with real life. Lesson learned. Chair finished. Tadah....