Upcycle Your Own Heirloom
One of the things I love most about upcycling is the fact that you get to create something totally unique, something that nobody else in the whole wide world will have, because you designed it.
I had this old chair in my workshop for a long time, the shape of is was lovely but the fabric was more ‘care home’ than ‘Ideal home’ and it was just waiting to be upcycled and a new lease of life and style injected into it. As luck would have it one morning at the Sue Ryder Sale in Nettlebed I stumbled across some Vintage Sanderson Fabric still with the label on it saying it cost 1D !! I knew instantly that this was the fabric to bring my chair back to life.
I enlisted my amazing upholsterer to help me create my dream chair, a one-off that could be handed down to my girls. I wanted to paint the legs first to give it a more contemporary twist, so I chose to paint them in a fab grey colour. This is a great trick to give a chair a bit of individual character and modernise it. Just using the vintage fabric, it could have just looked like I was recreating an antique style chair rather than something new and to my taste and style.
The chair was a good solid chair and that’s a good tip, if your going to spend money re-upholstering a chair do make sure its a solid good quality chair, its does not matter if the fabric is in really bad condition as long as the bones of the chair as such, are good and that it has a great shape that you love.
So here’s the transformation in progress.
As you can see it’s quite a transformation and I LOVE it. By being clever you can create something unique that in the shop could cost a small fortune. Look on Gumtree for similar chairs there are hundreds of unloved chairs and most of them are no more expensive than £30-40. Charity shops are full of fabric off cuts, you will be amazed what you find, go crazy and pick something unusual that you really love. My chair is home now and I have to say I love it. If you’re a bit sentimental give the upholsterer a letter to pop in the chair when she works on it and then someday many many years from now someone may find it and find out all about the history of the chair and who designed it.
So hopefully your inspired to create something unique for your home, its great to be individual and creative and its great to save an old chair from landfill. Love it, just a bit scared that the cat may love it too!
Happy Upcycling everyone x
by LynneNovember 8, 2016