Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Chair.

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In November, my father in law retired, and his colleagues gave him, amongst many other things, a chair made of cardboard, painted white and adorned with stickers with the company logo all over.

It was of such intense beauty that, after politely thanking them, he intended to throw the whole chair out immediatly. That´s when I stepped in. Because I saw this baby had potential. I kept it in our garage - until this January, Tim threatened to throw it away if I didn´t actually do anything with it. So I had to get started to save it from it´s destiny trash a second time.

While I had literature debates with my friends, I let our alltogether...wait - 8 kids scrap off the stickers. I then pondered a while about painting it, or sewing a slipcover, but I a) didn´´t have enough acrylic paint in the right colors in my house and b) sewing a slip cover would probably mean accurate measuring, which isn´t among my favourite things.

So...
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I got out all my fabric scraps, the spray glue that was still lying around, and began cutting various rectangles, which I simply randomly glued all over that chair.

Ronja enjoyed running back and forth between the basement and the kitchen to bring me all sorts of old fabric pieces, all the while discovering old treasures, like that monstous sun costum I once made her for carneval.
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It took some effort to convince her not to wear it to school the following day. 
I really like how I can trace back the origin of most fabric scraps - that colorful striped one at the corner, I used that for a baby matrass for the bike trailer to lay my twins on before they could sit upright. The pink matrioshka one above it - it made a nice dress for my kids cousins. And the big green one is a scrap of the 50 tiny green sprots bags I once made for kindergarden. 

When I ran out of spray glue, I proceeded with regular white glue, and found it to work even better.
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The nicest touch to finish it, I think, is the Union Jack tea towel I got the summer two years ago. I kept it to make it into a purse, but I can´t bring it over me to cut it apart. Or use it as a regular tea towel. I didn´t glue it on, but just laid it gently over the backrest.
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And then I got some very sweet, happy girls to pose for about 2 and a half minute on my chair, before they went on running through the house tickling each other and squeaking about "boys" :)
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I´m not concerned about fraying - so far, it survived almost three weeks in my household, and in the case some rectangles should fall off... oh well, I´ll just grab my scissors and attach new ones :)
And it´s such a bright and shiny new addition to my colorful kitchen!

Music:

I´m still loving Marble sounds :)

3 comments:

Ginx Craft said...

I love your chair. Just makes you feel happy looking at it.

creativejewishmom/sara said...

great job and so happy you saved it from gettting trashed! wonderful to see you again on craft schooling sunday!

creatrish said...

J'adooore, pleins de couleurs , super sympa..