Quick winter project: re-covering work as play

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."   ~ Carl Jung

"Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder."

~ Mason Cooley

I love this chair that I adopted and then neglected. Now I'm gonna play with it.

I bought it fifteen years ago at a garage sale of a prominent businessman for $20. It is hand-carved, and although it is not meant for comfortable sitting, I like how it looks. It could be pretty old, I haven't had an appraiser look at it. I found fabric at Calico Corners to re-cover the seat, since I didn't particularly care for the colors and pattern of the one it had. The distressed-look linen I bought conjures Louisa May Alcott or Jane Austen. Drool. For years the chair has served a fine purpose as a "bookshelf" in the bedroom, with the fabric I bought lying on the seat under the books, well protected. A chair that you don't sit on much, because it might be more for decor than function, is called an occasional chair. This one could be called a never chair.

When we rearranged the living room recently and took out the bulky dining table we almost never used, I remembered the bookshelf occasional chair. Transporting it from a dark corner of the bedroom to the warm light of the occasional room, minus the books, renewed my interest in re-covering the chair.

This was a fast, easy project (about an hour). Quite silly that it took me fifteen years to get to this and enjoy the chair. Note to self: Play with the things you love now, don't put it off.

I took the ribbon trim off the edge of the seat, exposing the staples. I didn't need to take the fabric off; I just put the new fabric right on top.

I made a muslin pattern first, then cut the linen following it. While I cut the muslin I was thinking about the muslin dresses Jane and Elizabeth Bennet wore in Pride & Prejudice. Wouldn't I have loved to be one of the Bennet sisters . . . one of the elder sisters. I also thought about the younger sisters remaking hats with new trims. I felt connected with all those Bennet girls -- re-using, recycling, remaking.

Don helped me with the staple gun, stapling the new fabric onto the wood base, because I lack wrist strength (carpal tunnel). Then I re-attached the trim with a glue gun.

Here sits the occasional chair in the corner with a Paris pen & ink, 200-year-old poetry books from my dad's collection, and a few things I inherited from Grandma Olive, herself a very good re-user and re-maker -- a re-creator): Cupid lamp, lyre table, tea box, oriental carpet, and Navajo rug.

This has been a nice Sunday activity, and it gave me something to blog about. (I know, I always have such a hard time coming up with something, don't I? Pshaw!)

And as Mr. Darcy said to Miss Elizabeth Bennet:

"Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."

A great many things from the past give me pleasure!

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