Upcycling project - Painting fabric chairs

Last year some of my cream Ikea tub chairs were looking a little stained and tired, and although I searched the internet for a pattern to make new covers there wasn't one to be found. They were too good to throw away though, so I had a go at making a pattern myself - what a disaster!

Undeterred I went back to the internet, and found a few articles and blogs about painting fabric chairs, and thought to myself "nothing ventured..." , and if it didn't work they would have to be replaced anyway. I bought some emulsion paint to match the room I was decorating, something called fabric medium which the reference blogs told me would help with painting onto fabric, and got out my paint brush and some newspaper. The advice was to spray the fabric with water, mix some emulsion paint with water and fabric medium, and to give the chairs at least 2 coats of paint, allowing it to dry fully between coats (I used 1 pot of fabric medium and 1 pot of water to about 2 parts of emulsion for my mixture, and combined them all together in an old Whizz tub which had a wide top and screw on lid, so that I could keep the excess fresh until the next coat).

Well, after the first attempt the chairs looked fine, but were REALLY hard and scratchy on the surface - I think they would have taken off your skin like sandpaper if you had attempted to sit on them and rest your arms! I thought maybe waxing them would help, so I went back to the internet and ordered some wax that you use to re-proof wax jackets. With a bit of elbow grease and the help of a hot hairdryer the fabric was soft and smooth to touch again, and waterproofed which will help to prevent future staining!

The starting point...

Here are some photos of my work in progress....don't worry if the first or second coats look a bit streaky and irregular!

They will dry more evenly than you think. Also, when you apply the wax, it will make the colour a shade darker - rub it on thinly, in sections with an old dry cloth, then heat it with the hairdryer and buff it into the fabric well. My small tub of wax has coated 4 tub chairs, and still has about 1/3 of a pot remaining.

 The final result....

I wouldn't recommend this for an antique chair or family heirloom, but it's certainly given my tub chairs a new lease of life, for the cost of less than £20.00 - well worth the effort! Susan x

Upcycling old jeans

 So, for many years I've been an avid blog follower, and I have learnt such a lot from other people sharing their tips and ideas so freely. Now it seems I have entered the world of having a blog of my own, so if you are reading this, thank you, and please forgive any mistakes I make as I learn!!

After a spring clean of our wardrobes, I suddenly ended up with 5 pairs of old jeans in my craft room - they'll come in useful one day I thought! As my new year's resolution for 2015 is to use things up (all those half empty lotion and potion bottles are gradually reducing in the bathroom too), I decided that my entry for the March 2015 ClarityStamp Challenge would involve those discarded jeans.

Firstly I removed the back patch pockets, and stamped out a little scene using an Archival black ink pad, and a range of Clarity Stamps using the embroidered lines on the pocket as features of the design. I then cut off the bottom of one of the legs, and made the bag shape by stitching the cut edge, and just cutting drawstring holes into the original hem of the jeans and threading through a ribbon.

Finally I restitched the pockets onto one side of the bag - in retrospect I should had done that first before making the bag, but c'est la vie!


I tried to leave some frayed bits of denim sticking out of the seams in places, just to add a bit of character to the final bag, and I put a little sunburst stamp on the inner pocket peeping out - might go back and add a flock of birds above the houses too before I use it as a gift bag.

I won't tell you about all the cursing when I was trying to get the tension right on my sewing machine - I think I unpicked it half a dozen times,
and
I won't tell you how much I wished I had just used a fabric glue to stick on the pocket edges - that only occurred to me after the event!,
and
I won't tell you how I could hear my mum shouting at me not to break the needle on the machine as it hit the little rivet in the top of the pocket - even though I live in the Highlands of Scotland and she lives in Essex!!!

What I will tell you is that the bag holds 3 bottles of beer perfectly, and will make a fab gift bag for a man in your life....

Thanks for visiting, Susan x