Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Crafts Continue

One of the best gifts we got for Catie was this bouncy chair.

Out of anything I had this is the thing that I used the most.  Catie would spend time in it playing with the toys while I made dinner or when I had other things I needed to do.  It was somewhere I could put her yet she was still stimulated and we loved watching her grab for the toys.  The only thing I didn't love about this chair was what an eye sore it was.  It could have been worse and had Winnie the Pooh on it but this wasn't a whole lot better. 

Michelle and I had talked a couple times about the possibility of recovering our chairs (she has one too) but it didn't ever happen.  Michelle is due to have a baby any day now and is going to be using her chair again so she was re-motivated to tackle this project and was the initiator.  We headed over to the Fabric Addict to buy our fabric, revealing our novice sewing skills when we asked for basting tape instead of bias tape.  We both ended up picking the same fabric and headed home to make our chairs.

Michelle had raised her concerns over the project a couple times but I just brushed them off, I'd looked at my chair and it was pretty simple.  I hadn't looked at the amazing construction that went into hers and it caused us a few more problems but with the minor casualties of a broken seam ripper and multiple pin priks my finished project looks like this:


I'm so thrilled and can't believe it looks this good.  It's definitely not perfect but I think I'm the only one that will notice the imperfections.  You can check out Michelle's here

The unfortunate part of this project is that Catie is now finished playing with this chair so it has to be put away until the next baby.  It'll be fun to pull it out then and have such a beautiful chair.
L

4 comments:

Amanda said...

you amaze me...seriously!!!

Jenn said...

What a great idea! They're always so ugly. Did you have a pattern or did you just make it up?

Michelle said...

I absolutely love the recovering idea. I have a chair like your friend's chair and have wanted to recover it. You wouldn't happen to remember how you did it??!! :)

Laura said...

I unpicked all the pieces first, including all the straps making sure I knew how and where they went back on. I used the original pieces for a pattern to cut out my fabric. Then I took off the original fabric and replaced it with my new stuff. I used the original straps, the batting and the fabric on the underside. I sewed it all back together zig zagging over the straps really well. I covered the seams with new bias tape.
On places where it seemed tricky I drew a picture of how it went back together. It helps to take pictures too.
You can do it, just go slow.