Recovering an armchair - Part 1

We have a beautifully shaped wing back armchair in our reading/ LittleImp's play corner that is in desperate need of being recovered, although the chair itself is sturdy sturdy & will see many years yet.  The white cover  though has seen better days, with stains and tears that can no longer be hidden with strategically placed cushions!

                    

While looking for light fittings the other weekend I popped into a local furniture store and became smitten with the fabric on an particular armchair, an armchair that was also pretty comfy.  'Wasabi' green coloured geometric leaves all over on a cream background.  A quote to recover our armchair in said fabric turned out to be twice the price of buying the armchair in store. Mmmmmm, dilemma.

Decision:  Buy new comfy armchair from the store...Move old wing back armchair into LittleImp's room as a better reading chair than the one she has already....and here is the fun part.....recover the wing back chair!

I say 'fun' because I'm not going to attempt to redo the whole thing myself - that would be far from fun, that would be scary!  My plan is to use some of the existing cover that still has life in it and add and embellish to my heart's content to make a fun chair for a little girl's room.

I'm replacing the armrest sections and the cushion cover, so ripped them out & apart & used them as templates to cut the deep aqua green canvas I had bought as the replacement fabric.  Next I made up the box cushion cover with a zip in the back.  I winged the making of cushion cover a bit, but also found this tutorial by Design Sponge quite useful.   Then I couldn't help myself & decided to start on the 'embellishment' plan.  The tree is just the beginning....

And then came the owls and leaves, and plans for flowers and much much more!

I'm having fun!!

Hot air balloons...and some more owls

Little Imp's feature wall gets busier.

I hung all of the frames I have finished so far yesterday afternoon and this morning I received the payoff when Little Imp stood up in her cot and saw the designs coming together on her wall.
'Wow' she exclaimed, with the enthusiasm only a 21-month-old can muster at that time of the morning!

The Hot Air Balloons frame is an embroidery I did years ago (1993 according to the date on the back).  I used a design from a library book, but no idea who to credit it to.  Anyhow, it fits perfectly in one of the frames I have for Little Imp's feature wall, so in it goes!

The balloons, clouds and landscape were embroidered onto calico that I had dyed blue and then I remember using mum's water colour paints to extend the scene onto the white cardboard frame.  A long time ago...

And some more owls....

Mini quilt - in a frame

I've finished the first frame for Little Imp's feature wall!

I wanted to combine some of the sewing techniques I have been playing with and practicing over the last year or so, quilting, free motion embroidery, applique.  This is how it turned out.  As you can see, I'm still getting mileage out of one of my favourite fabrics - an owl print I've used to make many owl baby grows already, and a number of the other owls are earmarked for other frames already.  So there will be more!

I'm not sure that this is truly a 'mini-quilt', but the background has the look of lots of tiny pieces of fabric being pieced together like a quilt.  To achieve the haphazard layered look I cheated a bit by ironing my little bits of fabric onto a pre-cut piece of heat-and-bond, including the owls.

The pieced fabric 'sheet' before being ironed onto the aqua backing fabric

Then for some free motion embroidery.  Haphazard stitching around each little piece of fabric, sometimes going around more than once to reach the next section.  This is what the back looked like.  Almost tempted to frame this, I do like geometry designs.

And here are some close ups of the design detail.

Tree positioned just so Mrs Owl can perch on her branch

An appliqued tree and leaves, edged with free form stitching and some little flowers. 

Some free form flowers embellished with  buttons

Not all of the pictures for Little Imp's feature wall frames are going to be this detailed.  But it actually didn't take too long to make once I had worked out the design & how I would put it all together.  One picture frame down....