TaHoe cRafTiNg

Those who know me well, know that I love crafts and crafting and being crafty…. and craftsy.  Trying new projects brings joy to my soul.  So, my current new-to-me idea is soldered charms/ornaments.  A friend of mine shared a link to her friend’s etsy.com site where she sells these darling handmade trinkets.  See more at:  www.MyMelodieDesigns.com.

Not knowing how to create these little gems, I did what all craft-direction-needing minds do… I went to YouTube.  Yes, I found many instructional videos and made my shopping list.  Today, I’m off to JoAnn’s to get the booty… with coupons, of course.  For the first time ever, I’m glad I saved my glittery scrapbooking paper scraps from my Christmas albums.  Sweet!  I knew I’d eventually find a reason to use them!  It has presented itself, much to my liking.

This week I’m getting together with my highschool bosom friend, Connie.  We are known for trying new and uncharted waters when it comes to crafting.  In March we covered the antique chair with vintage quilts and green piping.  I can’t remember if I blogged about that, so here is the finished product:

I also can’t remember if I ever showed a pictures of our Macramé beach bags???  I made mine about 1/2 a day ahead of Connie and figured out that I should have made the flowers all smaller.  So her bag has tidy, neat flowers in little rows and doesn’t look as spread out as mine does.  Here’s mine:

In a few weeks I’ll post our finished product pictures!  Please stay tuned!

The Quilted Chair

During Spring Break we took off for Northern California for a week of relaxation at the home of my high school friends.  While there, my friend Connie talked me into helping her recover an old chair with quilts that she was saving for such a time as this.  Neither of us had done reupholstering before, but hey, we can watch youtube instructional videos like the best of ’em.  And we looked at pictures in a book at JoAnn’s.  Anyway, we succeeded and now I’m addicted to recovering old furniture.  I would love to find a little girl’s plush chair to make over for Zaza’s room.  However, our dear friends also sent us home with several more additions to Zaza’s room…. so a newly recovered chair would be a squeeze for sure.

Here is your photos essay on recovering a chair with old quilts…. something you always wanted to know, I’m quite sure.

Gather as many of your people as possible for tack removal.  This is not a fun job, but most necessary.  BUY the little hoof shaped tool for $7 at JoAnn’s and you won’t be sorry!  We even used most of the old tacks again.

We saved all the batting as it was in decent shape.

We used the old cover as a pattern for the new pieces.

The bottom was really easy…. compared to the top and back!

Connie made miles of welt cord piping cut on the bias for ease of turning corners.

We fluked out and unknowingly used a chair that had these nice wooden pieces on the bottom to hide all our tacks.  Sweet!

The wedding knot on the back looked adorable!

Two different quilts with Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern were used on the front.  The green piping tied all the quilts together and it is adorable! Can’t you see why I want to do another one?!?