Chinese Chippendale Chair Before & After

Found it! A Chinese Chippendale (bamboo) style chair has been added to the guest bedroom's desk this week.  Yay!
After searching and searching, style chair was either only sold in sets or was quite expensive (Jonathon Adler's version starts at $500).
One night, a forum poster on DecorPad.com also suggested the Chinese Chippendale style for my Natura desk, so I thought I'd try looking just one more time. This time my google-fu stumbled on this chair being offered by One Kings Lane.  It was not the right color and I had been hoping to find a $10 Craig's List chair, BUT since it was the first reasonably priced chair I had seen that was not sold in pairs, I jumped on it.


Lessons Learned

• Customizing the chair is as easy as "they" say!
  A little paint and fabric and the chair was my own style.  While it took time, the level of skill required was minimal.  I could see this chair being many different colors long into the future!
• Painting with a brush works too.
  Since I am in a high-rise building, spray painting is not an option (sad face!).  If I hadn't already painted my dining chair legs, I would have been nervous about streaks and brush strokes, but those turned out really smooth.  And the chair looks great too!  No brush strokes at all.
• Work fast with latex paint!
  The white high gloss paint dried so fast that I had to be extra careful not to go over recently painted sections. Attention had be taken to smooth out paint bumps or drips right away, since it might be too tacky to smooth out later.  With other paint types, I never had the hurry and do it right feeling like I did with this.  =)  One tip given to always keep a wet edge of paint when using latex.  Good advice.
• Be strategic about the order you paint sections.
  The chair back took a lot of time to paint because of all the small nooks and angles, and a lot more touch up was necessary because it was really hard to get good paint coverage in certain spots.
  I found it worked best to start by painting a thin layer of paint on those difficult spots first, then paint the remainder of the chair and then go back to the difficult spots again.  By the time I worked my way to the trouble areas, the were dry enough for me to paint again. 

Materials Used for Chair Re-Vamp

• White gloss latex paint (dried super fast, just needs 2 hrs between coats)
• fine grit sand paper
• 1 1/2" synthetic paint brush (had at home)
• this chair needed 3 coats (minimum).  I bought an 8 oz paint can, and used less than half the can.  Since white isn't a saturated color, I would have been find with a sample size 4 oz container. 
• About 3/4 of the yard of fabric I purchased at a local fabric store
• Staple gun to secure fabric to seat (had at home)
• Drop cloth to protect floors and collect dust from sanding

As I'm typing this list, I realized I only sanded my chair and didn't get paint with primer mix it (my usual method).  Ugh.  Fingers crossed it doesn't start to bubble or crack.  Regardless, I love my chair!

Guest bedroom 

The room is still a work in progress, still looking for

• artwork for above the bed
• navy euro shams (scheduled to ship this week)
• nightstand or small chest of drawers for the side opposite the desk
• large scale artwork for the wall opposite the bed.  Or maybe a dresser?
  Obviously a guest room doesn't really need a dresser, but I was thinking I could use 1/2 to stash some sewing goodies.  Ha!

Love a bag of rice!

It's all true - a bag zip lock bag of rice can save a phone! 

While showing my hubs an adorable video of my 2 year old cousin, the phone slipped out of my hand... and right into the glass of water below. It was a comedy of errors! I tried to shake out all the water. Immediately I knew the speaker had stopped working. Unfortunately I didn't know you are supposed to power off right away. I was still using it and "testing" to see how much had died. Then I googled what to do and followed directions to power off and seal the phone in a bag if rice. 

I could only stand to leave it for 36 hours, but it works perfectly now!!! Whew!!!

While we were out and about I realized how much I rely on my favorite apps. Last night I jumped into a taxi without even knowing the address of where I was going because I was just so used to always having it on my phone. Luckily the guy was in a good mood and let me wing it, "Um, drop me 4 blocks south of the X sculpture." What a mess!

And while hubs was sweet to oblige my "can I use your phone, real quick?" requests... His apps were different than mine and so unorganized. It made me miss my phone even more. He hasn't complained about the rearranging & organizing I did on his phone, so he must like it!  

Swatches arrived. Change of Plans.

Good thing for swatches!  The plan for the guest bedroom has done an about face. 

The swatches showed me the room has too much cream and really doesn't need more. I really started to favor the two white based fabrics on the left. 

I still like the fabrics below, but not for this room. 

Then I fell for these gorgeous coordinating pink fabrics from Duralee (I think from the Fuchsia set). Aren't they great? Best price I saw was $35 a yard. Not good when I'd want at least 15 yards for the duvet & pillows. 

Then my friend J and myself fell in love with Schumacher fabrics (she was working on her master at the same time).  Of course Schumacher is "to the trade" only.  But I found a way to keep the orange & blue look that I liked by using Schumacher's Chiang Mai fabric (in the aquamarine color way). And since we lived in Shanghai, I thought the dragon would be a cheeky addition to our home. 

The look for the new bedding for the guest bed... Ta da!

I'm waiting for the Euro shams to arrive - I ordered in Schumacher's Betwixt in Navy with Ivory. It's an amazing woven. I The swatch works well against the new Cuddledown duvet I ordered in Sapphire.

And also waiting on these summer weight 600 thread count sheets with a navy stripe. 

Almost coming together into something real!!!

Next Project: Sewing a Duvet Cover

Haven't really liked the bedding in the guest bedroom ever since it returned from the storage time capsule - nearly TWO years ago. Gah.  That's a long time to keep something you really don't like, so one day I donated the bed set to Salvation Army to properly motivate me to take action.  I searched high and low for a duvet cover I loved with little results.
Then I found a duvet cover who's name we must not say, Volder-JonathonAdler-mort, that I lost on eBay at the very last minute.  I mean, I was already calling it mine and sent a photo to show off to a friend, then BAM blindsided by a new bidder when the clock was counting down with just SECONDS left.  Of course I tried to find the same one, but nada.  Sigh.  

And when you can't find what you want at the stores, the only answer is of course... CUSTOM.  

Right now I'm scheming a plan to make a queen size duvet cover for the guest bed.  Sometimes DIY makes my wheels spin too much because now the options are nearly limitless.  But still - I've been looking at fabrics for the duvet cover off and on for about 2 months.  Now it's April 25 and I have guests coming on May 16 and no duvet cover.  If I don't finish, it's okay, I have a quilt in the closet as my back-up plan.

The Premier Prints' Mandarin collection has some fabrics that I'm considering... #10 is from a different collection, so I ordered a sample of it and a few of the others.  Since most are light weight and a few are medium weight, I wanted to see the difference.  And check to see if #10 will coordinate with the others.

Duvet front: #10 if the teal matches the teal in the PP fabrics.  #11 as second choice.

duvet back: #7 if I can find the fabric (back ordered) or maybe dots on #9?? Or the chevron?

euro shams (2): Really like #2 chevron as for shams.  It's a medium weight fabric, so that might work.

accent pillow:  depends on everything else.  Ha! But #5 & #6 & #9 are top favorites for accent pillow.

In a perfect world, the chevron would come in teal, but their teal material has a white background instead of natural like the others.  No go.  Frustrating.  I see why people shop on Spoonflower.  

It's times like this that I wish I knew a store that carried trendy decor fabrics.  I ventured out to a HUGE fabric warehouse (3 stories!) earlier this week and was severely disappointed.  Their variety of notions were tempting, but after price checking on my phone (don't you love that technology can do that?!) I decided to pass.  

Sewing Reveal: Hand Cut Chenille Blanket

Ta da! Just finished this hand-cut chenille blanket for Baby D last weekend and it was a big hit with the parents-to-be at their baby shower.  Surprisingly, it only took about 3 and a half days to make.  I just adore the blanket's bright colors!

Here's the hand cut chenille baby blanket I made previously; both are based on the fabulous tutorial found over at Aesthetic Nest.  Be sure to take a look at the Flicker Group photos for inspiration.  One blanket added tiny pom pom trim around the binding.



Based on the registry, I knew the baby girl's bedding was going to be green and blue.  Hopefully it coordinates with her room, but regardless, I imagine Baby D will use this more as a play mat or stroller cover than anything else.

On the close up photo of the faux chenille side, you can see the layers of flannel material that are cut to create the super soft rows of wavy chenille.  It really is a cozy blanket.  The hubs even asked if it were possible to make an extra large blanket for him.




Baby Chenille Blanket Shopping List
◊ 1.5 yards of each fabric x 6 layers.  My finished blanket measured around 40" x 50"
◊ Two packages of 0.875 inch double fold quilt binding that were 3 yds each. (Next time make my own!)
◊ Matching thread - the chenille channels use a ton of thread.  I used a natural color thread for the top printed fabric and pink in my bobbin for the chenille side (green would have been the norm, but I was in a playful mood and I already had pink at home).
And get this, I completely forgot about needing teal thread for the binding BUT it turns out the thread I used for my split shower curtains was a perfect match!  Sometimes it pays to be forgetful.

The blanket's fabric in order:

1) Top printed paisley

2) Hot pink broadcloth 

3) Pastel pink flannel
4) Printed pink flannel w/ green butterflies (on sale!)
5) Printed green flannel w/white print (on sale!)
6) Solid green flannel 

Then I only cut the layers of flannel into the chenille rows, leaving the print and super bright pink.  I was a little nervous about using the pink with green butterflies, wondering if it would blend into the background enough.  I think it worked out great on this blanket - and at just $3/yd - can't beat it.
The bright pink fabric on the bottom of the stack is a broadcloth cotton/poly fabric that I used as a "backing" of sorts to pop behind the chenille rows.  Since I used the solid green flannel as the top most layer to make the chenille, I knew it would appear most prominently so I thought a high contract color like candy pink would look nice.  Plus the extra layer gives the blanket a little more heft since the top fabric is just your average light weight quilter's cotton.

This blanket was so fun to make - I'm already thinking about making the next one!