I don’t think I often post in the first week of the year, so I often miss the opportunity to wish you a very good new year?! But not this time, this year I’m on time: I hope you find (creative) ways to get to where you want to be this year, and enjoy the road towards that place in the meantime. I know I will!

We arrived back home from the Netherlands a few days ago, where we stayed at one of Eduards sisters and her husband in Rotterdam. A lot of evenings were spent talking about boho interiors and colourful carpets and furniture, as they were working on decorating their new house, and I’m continuously interested in interiors. Perhaps this interest will seize to exist when we buy a house one day. These conversations not only inspired me/us to buy a new – still to arrive – carpet for our living room, but it also inspired me to finally do something with our wooden chair in our living room. Yesterday evening I upcycled the chair with a colourful woven top. Let me show you how it turned out. It’s officially my first DIY project of 2018!

We bought two of these chairs in 2013 I believe. Just after we arrived in France. One chair was complete, but this one wasn’t. You can see the difference in one of the last pictures. The wooden framework was broken. First we thought that we could fix it, but soon we found out that it wasn’t fixable. Eduard and I refurbished the seating area on both chairs in 2014 and at that time I did a quick weaving on the top part of one of the chairs. I was never happy with it, but I didn’t know how to make it to my taste, so I left it like that. The original weaving was pretty widely spread over the framework and the natural colours were meant to match the seating area, which made the chair pretty boring. So I often resorted to putting colourful cushions in front of the weaving. Which didn’t make things better, perse.

All the talk about patterns and colours made me realise that it would probably be a good idea to put some color on top of that chair. So the second day of us being back home I did a quick search and figured out that I wanted to make a woven pattern with a few different colours. I chose a read, blue, green and yellow in my never-ending stash of yarn. All four colours were mixed with all kinds of threads and shades of that specific color.

The pattern is made by weaving on the four sides of the rectangle at the same time. So you do one side at a time and move on to the next one. I went from top to bottom, from right to left, and so on, using one long thread of different yarns on each side. Making a whole circle every time. Each circle on top of the ones that run in the opposite direction. I continued on like this and got this result. I purposely kept the centre part open, for a playful effect.  I made a knot in the beginning of each bunch of yarn on the wooden frame and I did the same at the end. I worked away the threads in the fabric frame in the end.

It was actually very easy to do. I think I finished it while watching a few episodes of House of Cards in about 1,5 hour. The costs? Well I’m not exactly sure, as I had all the yarn lying around in my workspace, but I would guess it wouldn’t exceed 1EUR as I mostly used acrylic yarns.

The result is very satisfying. Even Eduard liked it. It has become a fun chair that is also very nice to sit on. I find this chair more comfortable to sit on than the original. But I like the look of the original (shown below) as well. So much for project nr. 1 of 2018, I have to figure out a next project for tonight. Something that will take me longer than one evening!