The Floral Chair

The chair pattern I used was based on the Lisa Chair by Kris Compas of One-Inch Minis.  I have found her tutorials enormously helpful, even for half scale work.  Because I’m working in half scale, I also size down the materials I use (substituting mat board for foam core, card stock for mat board, etc.) to try to keep the proportions correct.  For this chair, I decided to use my Cameo Silhouette III to cut the pattern pieces.  Since it doesn’t do well on a thicker material like mat board, I had it cut four duplicate patterns from lightweight chipboard for each piece, then just glued them together with glue stick.  The Cameo cuts much more accurately than I ever could!

I found the fabric I used at Miniature Luxuries, which has a lot of lovely print fabrics for miniaturists.  The background is a very dark navy (not black, as it appears in the picture).  It’s not perfect, but I don’t think I’m likely to find a closer match.  My first try was too narrow, the arms were too thick, and the back wasn’t padded enough.  Plus, the legs were a bit wonky.

On my second try, I widened my pattern a bit, used skinnier dowels for the arms, added more layers of batting to the back, and drilled holes in the bottom of the chair for the legs, to make them more stable.  The legs are made from fancy wooden toothpicks.  I know his chair has casters on the bottom, but I went with painting the tips of my legs gold.  For the button tufting, I used the button tutorial from One Inch Minis.

Not an exact match, but not bad.  Time to start the desk.