Vintage Chair Yeti-Over

Long-time readers may remember this vintage chair make over from way back in 2010. Sadly, when I moved into my house, the chair sat in the workshop for a while and someone left something metal on the seat, where it promptly rusted and left a big stain on the cream chenille. I tried cleaning it and only made it worse. It was a sad, sad day at the Rosenfeld Cottage.

Until! I saw this awesome chair on Apartment Therapy.

Not surprisingly, it's super difficult to find a gorgeous skin like that for an affordable price. But West Elm sells these Mongolian lamb's wool pillow covers for slightly less than a fortune (and I had a gift certificate that covered a big chunk of the cost).

I don't know how well these will hold up, so I didn't want to go through all the pain of actually reupholstering the chair - plus I didn't want to cut the pillows up. Who knows what would happen with all that fur? So I basically laid one pillow cover over the seat, and loosely basted it to the piping on the upholstery in the front and back. Then I looped the second cover over the back and did the same thing. 

Here is the before (without the tragic seat stain)...

And here is the after...

Maybe not quite as luxurious as the original inspiration, but it's definitely fun and adds a lot of texture to the living room. What do you think?

DIY West Elm style pouf

I love these dhurrie poufs, at West Elm. I dunno why exactly, it's like all the fun of a bean bag, but with the sophistication of an ottoman. I mean, how cute is this?

But I don't love the $249 price tag. For that price, I could get a real piece of furniture!

So one day I was eyeballing my old memory foam mattress topper and wondering what the heck I should do with it, when it hit me - I should make a pouf!

I used my electric bread knife to cut the foam into 24 inch squares, and then layered them all on top of each other, like a layer cake (using spray adhesive where the frosting would go). I had to clean up the edges a little bit, as (much like my layer cakes) my 7 layers were a little lopsided.

Then wrapped the whole thing in a layer of batting, and used an old mattress cover to make a little pillow case for the stack of foam. This will keep it nice and tidy inside the final slip cover, and disguise any unevenness in the edges of the foam.

Finally I used a dhurrie rug that I got on sale from Urban Outfitters (only $89!) as my material. It frays like a maniac, but the texture is consistent with the West Elm pouf. And unlike those other poufs, I outfitted mine with two zippers on the bottom, so that I could easily remove the cover for washing.

All in all, it only took about three and a half hours. And look how cute!

My only regret is that I had but one mattress topper to give to this craft project.