The Universe Hands Me a Gift - the Lamp and the Green Chair, Revisited

I love the way the universe works sometimes.  Last week, I was trying to figure out what I could use to make the shade for the side table lamp.  I had a couple of ideas, but I wasn’t convinced they’d be the right size.  That night, I went home, and in the mail was an envelope from a company that sells promo pens and other tchotchkes.  In the envelope, besides a sample pen, there was this:

I have no idea what it is.  Some kind of blister pack?  Packing material?  Whatever it is, it has little dimples or half spheres (the ones on top of the hexagons) the exact right shape and size for the lamp shade!  And what’s more, there are several of them, which gave me a chance to experiment, because we all know I am never happy with my first try.  😊

I carefully cut out one of the dimples, punched a hole in the top with my leather punch, and glued on a snippet from one of the plastic tubes that comes around the bristles of my fingernail brushes. 

Then I painted it with glossy green Testor’s paint (with a smidgen of black thrown in).  For the base, I painted a bead with a mix of green, yellow, black and white.  (Yes, this is actually the second try on the lamp shade, as the first one had some issues.)

I added a bead cap and a little spacer, as well as a bit of metal tubing, for the neck of the lamp.  To hold the shade in place, I like to use clear vinyl furniture disks.  They come in a standard ¾” diameter, which was a little large for this shade, so I cut it down.  It cuts fairly easily with scissors.  My cuts are not the cleanest, but they really don’t have to be for this purpose. 

I punched a hole in its center, once again using my leather punch.  (I love that tool.)  Naturally, I am out of grain of rice bulbs, so have some on order.  This is the lamp assembly, sans bulb.  The wires will go down through the center, and the bulb will sit on top of the vinyl disk.

The shade then fits over the disk (it's not glued in place yet, as I'm waiting for the bulb), and there we have it.

Last Monday, the fabric for my chair arrived, and I dived into dying it.  Because it is 100% polyester, I had to use Rit DyeMore.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t come in as many colors as original Rit, and there aren’t as many color formulas.  The frustrating thing about looking at colors online is that they aren’t always true to life.  They can also vary greatly from monitor to monitor.  I was shocked when I was looking at pictures of my trial chairs on my monitor at home to see how blue the middle chair looked!  In real life, the suede paper is not a bluish green at all; it is a soft gray green.  (If it showed up as blue green on your monitor, you must have thought I was smoking something when I said it was close to the original chair!)  I’m not entirely sure what the true color of the original chair actually is, and trying to match it to a possible dye combination shade is even trickier.  I finally decided on Apple Green, and picked up bottles of Peacock Green and Sandstone from my local Joann’s.  With DyeMore, you must use the stovetop method of dyeing, which means stirring the fabric in a simmering pot for 30 minutes.  While that was something of a pain, I have to say, the dye took well.  Clean up was a snap.  You’re supposed to wash the fabric with an old towel after dying so that any dye that comes off in the wash will get deposited on the towel.  Apparently, no dye came off at all.  Of course, what I ended up with was nothing like what I saw on my monitor.  I thought my first try (on the right) was a little too intense and lime green, so I tried again, backing off the amount of dye slightly and reducing the Sandstone color a bit relative to the Peacock Green.  I really thought the color on the left was the best, until I started cutting it up into little bits to upholster the chair.  Then, the color on the left looked way too soft and minty, and I preferred my original Apple Green, which is what I ultimately used.

To make the suede buttons and the backing for the chair, I decided to print some of the green color on my white suede paper.  Fortunately, I tested on plain paper first because (you guessed it) the Apple Green color block from the Rit Dye site, when printed out, didn’t match my fabric at all.  I had to play with the color until I got something that I thought was a close enough match to the fabric, then printed a block onto my suede paper.  Whew!

When gluing upholstery fabric to anything that will be curved, I’ve found that it’s best to have the piece in its curved state while gluing.  If I glue the fabric to a flat piece and then try to curve it, I end up with a bunch of excess fabric in the middle.  I put a little glue stick on my foam, stuck the fabric to it, then curved the whole thing around a lip balm stick, holding it in place with a rubber band.  Then I clipped my fabric and glued it down.  I do not clip too close to the edge.  The fabric has to fit over the foam before being glued down on the back.

Usually, tacky glue works great for gluing upholstery.  However, with this fabric, I had to use Fabric Tack.  It just wasn’t staying well with regular glue.

With the seat and the back upholstered and stitches made for the tufting, I glued them in place and added tiny punched dots of the suede, rounded on my craft foam, as buttons. (See here for the process, except I didn’t have to glue anything to paper.) I also used the suede paper on the back.  It lies nice and flat, and I don’t have to worry about fraying on the edges.  The original chair had some kind of white trim.  I used white DMC perle cotton embroidery floss for this.

And here, finally, is the completed chair.