Trash to Treasure

At the beginning of the summer Steve pulled an old slightly broken rocking chair out of the trash. Really the only problem was a missing back piece and an out-of-date vinyl seat. I purchased some discontinued fabric from Big Lots and an idea began to form on how we just might turn this chair back into something usable and beautiful! Look closely behind the chair and you will see Bounder - the ever helpful eldest of our kitty cats.

We chose the easy fix part - the seat - to start with. The seat popped right out so I fitted a piece of fabric to it, cut it out with pinking shears and then Steve and I tacked it to the seat frame.

Bounder helped us a lot by playing with fabric scraps...

laying on the fabric...


and supervising!

We then had the finished seat and wow - it looked great! No more vinyl!

Next came the more difficult part - preparing the back piece. All went well at the beginning - I measured...

cut...
ironed...

pinned...

sewed...

and the blasted thing did not fit! AHHHHHHHH! Let me say that one more time: AHHHHHHHHHH! So my ever crafty husband worked hard via drastic measures to make the back piece fit; yes, he is cutting the poor little chair.


Well, let's just say the little cutting could not make up for the fact that my back piece was about a 1/2 inch too small. We have no photos to share those moments - I assume you all know how it feels when you think you are almost done with a project and then it just simply does not work and you realize you must start over. This time for us with a permanent change to the found object.

Thankfully I had enough fabric to start over and that is what I did the next evening. The whole back piece took me no more than hour to complete and complete correctly. My novice seamstress bones shined through in this project, but I finished the piece and now the chair is whole again with a slightly smaller back upright, but who will notice? We saved her from the landfill and now we have a story.


Bounder finished helping by sniffing the new chair and posing for a photo...

and Bobcat helped as much as she usually does - by watching birds.