"God Save The Queen" Chair

I guess I started this chair with the spirit of the 2012 Olympics in mind.  After I started it I began to have second thoughts since one of the pages I follow on Facebook suddenly announced that they were "So over Union Jack" now.  Well, I was already into it so I decided to press on and am ever so glad I did too.  She turned out great!

I found this cane back chair that had a whole in the cane.  Not experienced yet with replacing (I'm studying though), I decided to reupholster with a cushion instead.

It wasn't too hard after cutting the cane out with box cutters and then removing the spline by drilling holes 2" apart and then prying that out with a screwdriver.



Took about an hour with a few expletives sprinkled in for good measure though.

I then put only one coat of ASCP in Empire Red and dry brushed a metallic silver on top of that.  Pretty easy.

I ended up running into trouble when it came to dying the linen flour sacks to navy blue.  I swear I went through 4 bottles of Rit Dye in Navy blue and 3 teaspoons of black and never got anywhere close to navy blue.  I kept ending up with purple or dark purple.  Nothing the Rit people suggested worked.

After a few more expletives, I decided to purchase a bottle of Simple Spray upholstery spray in Navy Blue as a last resort.  I'm glad to report that it worked great.  One bottle sprayed 1 1/2 pieces of the opened up linen sacks, which was all I needed to reupholster the seat cushion and make a new cushion.

Since that problem was solved, it was smooth sailing all the way.

First the seat cushion stripes were painted with ASCP Empire Red and Old White:

I removed the old orange/yellow cushion cover and replaced with new cushioning wrapped in muslin.  Then I stapled the new Union Jack cover onto that.

Next came a assembly line process of of marking stripes on the front and back pieces of the chair.

Give yourself time and patience when doing these and remember that they will always look odd now matter how perfect you make the lines.

Once the stripes were on, it was just a matter of putting the back on first:

I chose to hot glue instead of using a staple gun because there was simple very little room for the staples.  Having the empty spot where the spline use to be made it extra easy to glue and "tuck" the fabric in.

Notice I have put Frog tape "markers" where I want my flag lines to line up at on both the front and back.

I flipped the chair and put muslin down on the inside back and then lined it with cotton batting for the cushion.

I hot glued, again, the front Union Jack cushion cover and then carefully removed the excess fabric from the edges with an exacto knife.

If you look closely, you'll notice that I chose not to add gimp - or braiding - around the edges as I wanted to retain a "rugged" look about the piece.

So this is my finished result!

'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN'

American-Style!

You'll find her for sale at Angel's Antiques this week!

Have a Bloody Good Week Chaps!

Vintage Resurrections