31 March 2011

A High Chair for Nana's house

When my mum was visiting last time we went out to buy a high chair to keep at her house, one less thing for us to pack into the car. We found this nice wooden one at a thrift store for $2! It was in good condition. But I did decide to give it a new coat of paint just because Henry would be eating off it.
And I made a little cushion for it too. Just a rectangle with some ties made out of Kevin's worn out boxer shorts. Because my little prince is used to sitting on a cushioned high chair.

Thanks to a certain person that left a certain comment that just about made my day I will try to be a little less vague in how I made it.

First off I measured the height of the back of the chair, the depth of the seat of the chair, and the width of the whole thing at the skinniest part.

Then the length of fabric to cut is equal to
height of back of chair PLUS depth of seat PLUS about 2 inches for seam allowance and poof of cushioning

And the width of fabric is width plus about 2 inches.

Then I cut some ric rac I had into eight 8-inch lengths. I stuck 2 into the seam allowance at each of the top corners and 2 on each side right about where the cushion would fold in the chair. By stuck into the seam allowance I mean like how the ribbons are added here.

Then I sewed up the rectangle like normal (right sides together, left a 6 inch gap for turning and stuffing) and turned. Then I stuffed it loosely, I had some slightly denser stuffing from an old cushion that seemed to work well.

Then to stop the stuffing from all falling to the bottom I forced the whole cushion, stuffing and all through the sewing machine to make 4 horizontal lines of stitching through the cushion. I don't have a fancy sewing machine or anything, I just forced it through.

It doesn't matter exactly where the lines are and it is a thin cushion so it's not important whether or not there is a stitched line where it has to fold if you know what I mean. I left the gap open till the end so I could arrange the stuffing as I went. Then lastly I closed up that gap and it was done.

I think if I had rounded the corners a bit it might look more professional. And if I had done some kind of nice pattern of top stitching instead of the horizontal lines but that might have been too tricky for me.

I hope that's the right amount of information on how I made it. It's so easy to be too vague and also easy to give too much obvious information but hard I think to get it just right.

Henry tested it out today and he seemed to like it.

2 comments:

  1. No kidding! I just picked one up similar to yours in a thrift shop, although, not quite the bargain you got. I need it for my grandson. Anyway....I need cushions for his chair. How did you go about doing this? The cushions are so nice! Really enjoy your blog! ;)
    Desi

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  2. THANKS Desi! I added a bit of an explanation on how I made the cushion, let me know if anything's not clear.

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