I just learned to upholster.

I just came back from visiting my parents in their new home in south Texas.  It was a really fun trip and I picked up a new skill while I was there.  About 10 years ago my parents bought a new couch and matching chair.  The couch was made of a casual blue cotton and faded quickly in the California sun (my parents move a lot) so my mom bought a slip cover while they were living in Tennessee.  The chair however remained uncovered except for my moms very creative attempt at converting it to cowhide chair.

Moo chair

Pretty cool huh?  Mom is great.  She sewed it on there with raffia.  I don't know exactly how to describe her style but its something like 'contemporary rustic.'  Is that an oxymoron?  I think you can see from the picture that the chair has some stains and is quite faded and mom had a few yards of some really cool fabric so I decided to try to cover it.  I made some pattern pieces out of an old sheet but I could not win my game of fabric Tetris to try to get my pattern pieces to fit on the 3 yards of cool fabric.  The solution was to buy a complimentary fabric to make parts of the chair.  Here is the result:




Front o chair



Oh and there was an ottoman too.