Chiang Is Good

The other main project I tackled this weekend was the seat and pillow of the white cane chair in our living room, which has been the BANE of my existence since I bought it last summer.

I happened upon this perfect specimen for our living room at HomeGoods one fine day and actually scored a nice discount on it because it was missing its seat cushion. Now, most normal people would walk away from a chair with no seat, but I saw it as an opportunity for a discount thinking the seat would be a cinch.

Looking back, I was wrong. Well, I wasn't wrong so much as uneducated about the proper way to go about getting a seat cushion. I tried a million different foam/fabric combinations and nothing worked. I finally wised up and bought the proper seat cushion and now will be confident (with good reason as opposed to stupidity) when I happen upon another chair in need of a seat. In the meantime, I've spent triple what my discount was (not to mention lots of time)....lesson learned.

But on to the good stuff...

Here's what precious looked like when I brought her home:

 

I knew that I was going to be limited on fabric, so instead of fashioning a true cushion with a full cover, I decided to trace the seat bottom on to a piece of thin plywood. I then attached a piece of foam (pictures below) to the plywood and covered the foam/plywood combo with staples like I would any chair seat - this had the advantage of eliminating any sewing as well as saving fabric yardage because I only had to recover the top of the seat as opposed to sewing a whole cover for a cushion.

 

Lucky for me, the seat popped right out of the bottom and I was able to trace it onto a thin piece of plywood (on the upteenth try...I went through many plywood thicknesses until I realized the thinner the better).

Here's my plywood cut (Carter cut it for me with a jigsaw):

 

I bought a ready-made seat cushion from Joann Fabrics...I initially went the route of buying thick foam and cutting it to the size I needed, but that foam was NOT meant for sitting - it was so hard and thick...another lesson learned. I thought the ready-made cushion was going to be too small, but once covered with the fabric, it actually ended up being OK. I still had to shave it down a bit with a box cutter knife as it was a bit longer than my plywood.

Here is the cushion atop the plywood with the star of the show, my Chiang Mai Dragon fabric.

Before I started stapling dear Chiang Mai to the cushion/plywood combination, I did spray the cushion with a bit of spray adhesive and stuck it to the board to help keep it intact through many tushes.

Then the stapling party began...

 

And after a couple of minutes, my seat was complete!

 

I then took the rest of the yardage and fashioned a very simple pillow to the dimensions I wanted for the back of the chair - I stuffed it with regular ol' pillow stuffing that you can buy at any craft store. I was able to use the exact full yard of fabric for both the seat and a small two-sided pillow.

Here's Miss Chiang all done:

 

And looking fabulous...