The B Farm : parson chair redo

I finally finished the chair for the art room! I love how it turned out and it's so much better than the one I was using.

But before I can share the chair, I have to clean the art room...

I don't know about you, but I can happily create and make messes but then something happens and I've reached a tipping point! It's no longer a creative mess but becomes a jumbled mess that saps creativity.

This week was my tipping point. I had this pretty recovered chair to share and YIKES!! There.was.no.room!! I couldn't take a nice picture of the chair in the studio, or find the parts of a project I needed, there were stacks of unorganized stuff everywhere, and the mess was threatening to swallow me whole.

So I started at the door and worked my way around the room, including the closet. The mess always gets worse before it gets better. Stacks and stacks of stuff:

Finally, with some rearranging, purging and putting away, the art room is once again a peaceful place to create (with a clean closet to boot!!):

Yes, there are still stacks of things but now it's organized and I know where it all is.

The easel is in a better place too where the light is more even. I'm so glad my easel has wheels!

And now I can share my chair! It went from this when I found it at GW,

$6 treasure

to a slipcovered version that started shedding its original cover in bits and pieces,

to finally completely redone. I plumped up the seat then reupholstered it. Voila!

haha, can you see Herbie's head sticking out? - somehow I missed that
when I took this picture.

Now I not only have a comfortable and pretty chair, I have a clean art studio as well. Hurray!

I finally got the chair done! It was quite ~~the pain~~ fun to work on. I'm happy with it although I probably would not want to make another one ~~ever~~ ~~again~~ anytime soon.

Remember the chair used to look like this:

Scuffed, torn, and needing help. I primed and painted the legs and there it sat for 2 weeks. Waiting....waiting for the ugly to be recovered...waiting for a new lease on life...

But now the wait is over and it is sporting a new slipcover, again useful and loved.

It only took me a day to make the slipcover - I used a canvas drop cloth...it's fairly cheap and a good sturdy fabric. A 9 x 12 size was $10. Not bad and it gave me lots of extra if I messed up.

I wanted to put some type of graphic on the fabric that would appeal to Mr. B since it will be mainly for his use but I also wanted something vintage so it would tie into our bedroom. I found these graphics from The Graphics Fairy - Vintage-Advertising-Clip-Art-Antique Bicycle and Vintage-clip-art-cute-bicycles.. We like to bike so these were perfect! I also used some others/ came up with my own that I put on the front.( Oops! I forgot to flip the words in the ones I made...oh well, the ink is so light it really doesn't show except for the one in the lower lefthand corner.)

I saved the graphics to my desktop, opened them in Photoshop Elements, and flipped the images horizontally. Voila! Backwards images ready to run through the printer.

Next, I cut a piece of freezer paper the size of a sheet of paper and using double stick tape, taped the two pieces of paper together with the dull side of the freezer paper facing the regular sheet of paper. (Very important that the shiny side is right side out!) I placed the paper/freezer paper combo in my printer, plain paper side up, which printed with the image on the freezer paper. ** Ink will be wet!

Laying it carefully down ( so ink won't smear) on my chair fabric, I ironed ( no steam ) it on. I carefully peeled the regular paper up - leaving the freezer paper stuck onto the fabric. Then I rubbed over the image with a smooth end of a paint brush. Next, I slowly peeled the freezer paper back. Image transfer complete!

My printer is getting low on ink so the image looks worn and faded. Perfect.

Back Graphic

Repeat for other images.

Front Graphics - I made it look kind of like an ad page

Then I started sewing -

Seat bottom to sides and front apron. So far, so good.

Then I messed up...my chair has curved sides on the back and I just cut those pieces straight. Ugh, bad idea. It took a lot of adjusting, pinning, pulling off, putting back on, and resewing to finally get it right...and it still had a piece that was off. Sigh.

Being in a hurry to finish it, I tweaked it to work. I don't recommend doing that however. It threw off the bottom fit. So more tweaking. Double sigh. Finally got the slipcover sewn together and added a skirt. It turned out ok; just don't look too closely at the crooked places. LOL.

Cats kept trying to sit in it while I was working on it/taking pictures

back of chair

Missy and Pippin like it!

It now sits at the desk and Mr. B won't have to pull one of the bigger chairs over and mess up our sitting area. Not bad for a $6 chair and $10 drop cloth.