Doily decor

I like to have a chair in a bedroom. Somehow, a room seems more properly furnished with a chair in the corner. And of course, it's useful for throwing things on.


For this reason, I had been on the lookout for a suitable chair for my spare room. It's not a large room, so a normal occasional chair wouldn't fit. I needed something smaller.


Yes, I am going somewhere yarn-related with this. Be patient.


In the end I spent $10 on a second-hand dining chair at the Eco Shop. Stained, battered and dated, (in my brother's words: "looks like it's been stolen from a motel") it was in need of a bit of attention. I originally intended to recover the seat with new fabric, but couldn't find any to fit the colour scheme of the room.


Which is where the yarn stash comes in. Amongst the Nana-stash were a couple of balls of 3-ply in a shade of purple that would work well enough. The idea I had was to create a doily-style cover for the chair seat, backed with a plain colour fabric.




After a bit of browsing, I selected one of these three patterns. In fact, I inadvertently chose the smallest of the three, (the yellow one) which was a bit contrary to my plans. All of the patterns were for doilies smaller than my chair-seat, but by using thicker yarn and a bigger hook, I hoped to get a larger result.


By the time I was working the final rounds of the doily, I knew it wouldn't be big enough. Some improvisation was needed. I left off the final round of decorative picots, and made a couple more rounds based on the previous pattern, joining the 'petals' of the doily to make a continuous round.


That was enough to extend the doily to the edges of the chair cushion. I used a netting-style stitch to stretch around and over the edges of the cushion, and that was that.


While the doily was drying out from blocking, pinned into shape over the (plastic bag-covered) chair cushion, I sanded down the chair and spray painted it grey. A piece of teal fabric and a staple gun covered the original hideous pattern on the chair seat, and a length of elastic, threaded through the edges of the doily, provided the means of holding it in place.


I'm quite pleased with my upcycled chair. It's actually the first thing I see when I walk in my front door, and I smile every time. It didn't use much of that yarn, though - there's still plenty left for the next project!