Anthro Inspired Folding Chair

Sissy and I fell in love with these chairs at Anthropologie last summer. And guess what? They were way out of our price range.

Since our price range is about $20, and these were selling for $199, we had no hopes of buying one of these beauties, never mind the four that we each wanted. I feel fairly confident in saying that the Man would not have been happy with me if I had spent $800 for four folding chairs.

Actually very confident.

So we made our own. I found the chairs for $4 each at a thrift store. And this great tutorial here.

It's only taken us about six months. To be fair, we started before Thanksgiving and then got extremely busy during the holiday season. Work got kind of busy and we haven't been able to get together long enough to work on them. But we decided to finish them today, at least one for each of us.

And I still have my cold. I should get extra sissy points for tackling this project with a cold. I didn't even get any sympathy from sissy. As a matter of fact, I made her blueberry creme brulee oatmeal for brunch.

Well, I was making it for myself because when I have a cold I want warm comfort food. I couldn't eat it in front of her. You know how she tries to take my stuff. So I made her some too.

She was sewing away on the decorative stitching in the fabric while I slaved over a hot stove.
But then I made her get really busy. We padded the top part with green padding and some white fuzzy fleecy stuff to smooth it all out. We laid the fabric over the top of it all and started stapling up the sides of the back and under the bottom.
We cut more green padding for the seat cushion, wrapped it all up in the white fleecy stuff and duct taped it closed, wrapping it just like we would a gift.

Our grandpa would be proud of us. He duct taped everything, including his socks when they got holes in them.
We laid the fabric for the bottom over the padding and centered it on the chair. Since our chairs have slats, we were able to smoosh the fabric down the sides of the slats and come out underneath the seat bottom. We stapled the fabric down, pulling it tight while stapling.

That sounds so easy. It was a little tricky. It's much easier to do this with two people. Except if one of them is a little skittish about putting her fingers near the point where the other is going to be stapling with a heavy duty stapler.

A glass of wine might help at this point, if you were inclined to do so. But not the stapler. She should remain on the straight and narrow. Heavy duty staplers are dangerous pieces of equipment, people.

We hot glued some ribbon along the sides of the back to cover the staples and fabric edges.

I love the fabric we chose. It has a 1950s retro feel to it, don't you think?

All in all, each chair cost us about $20 to make. That includes: the chair, fabric, padding, and fleece stuff.

I say that's a good thing.