Having recently bought my own house, I’m always on the look out for little nick nacks and pieces of furniture to clutter it up. The other week i went to my boyfriend’s parent’s house and saw a little stool in their skip which they were throwing out. Straight away i asked them if i could take it as i wanted to give some life back to little piece. Originally the stool was from ikea and consists of a plastic frame and a cushion which fastens to the top with velcro.
The cushion was loose as the velcro had come detached from the base and the cushion was torn and had paint stains on it.
I imagined painting the base and reupholstering the cushion to reattach to the top. Firstly i went through my stash fabric which i have collected over the past couple of years since receiving a sewing machine for Christmas. I found this really nice retro fabric which i brought from the Festival of Quilts (in Birmingham, U.K.) and thought it would be perfect for the stool. Once i decided what fabric i would use, i matched up a colour from the fabric and brought some paint for the base. I used PlastiKote ‘Project Enamel’ spray paint in cream, this apparently works on wood, metal and most plastics and is for use on craft projects…perfect! Just what i needed! The paint came in 100ml cans so for an even cover on the stool i used 3 cans.
Once the base was dry, i cut out a large circle of fabric, about 4 inches larger than the base of the cushion. Luckily, there was already a fabric cover on the cushion which has an elasticated band keeping it in place. In order to attach my new fabric, i just folded the fabric under the cushion and round the elastic and stitched in place. This was really simple and doesn’t need to be neat as no one will see it!
You can see the final piece below! i absolutely love it and its just what i imagined creating when i saw that discarded stool in that skip. I think its really cute and the retro theme of the fabric goes really well in my kitchen. This was my first attempt of ‘upcycling’ and i will definitely give it another go, even though, with the retro fabric, the stool actually looks older than it did when i started. Oh well, i love it!
Dreaming about making things 