Original design on reclaimed chair

An upholsterer creates a gift with an original geometric design.

Upholstery Journal | February 2010

by Kelly Frush

Using a reclaimed armchair, Eleanor Young of Fun Makes Good in Glasgow, Scotland, created a unique gift for a friend and stretched her creative limits.

Young loves working with discarded furniture and using colorful, fragmented designs to create her own stylized upholstery fabrics. After receiving a tip about an abandoned armchair on the street, Young took a look and knew immediately that it would make the perfect project.

She returned to her studio with the unwanted chair, stripped it down and began her transformative process by mapping the design on paper first to scale placement against the chair.

“I wanted to design something where the design was placed on the chair rather than all over,” Young says. “The chair has a really nice line to it, so I wanted something geometric that wouldn’t overshadow the actual shape of the chair.” She experimented with different geometric shapes and once she felt happy with a design, went to work dying fabrics and playing with colors.

“My friend, like me, likes neutral backgrounds with bold accent colors,” Young says, and cites her friend’s favorites as blues and purples. Young wanted to include her personal touch to the design, so she added a burst of color with contrasting orange pieces. Pleating some of the pieces introduced texture.

“The placement of all the individual sections in the design required a lot of care to align,” says Young. All the pieces were individually cut and assembled in patchwork style.

Young had just over a week to complete the project, which included sourcing material, stripping the chair, designing and creating the fabric and completing the upholstery.

“I was very pleased with the outcome,” Young says of her completed design. “It’s a textural, playful design that is both comfortable and practical.”

Do you have a project you'd like us to feature in Save My Seat? Send details of your project, along with before-and-after pictures in the form of print photos or electronic images (tif, eps or jpeg of 300 dpi or greater) to Kelly Frush, Editor, Upholstery Journal, 1801 County Road B West, Roseville, MN 55113, or e-mail them to krfrush@ifai.com. All images become the property of Upholstery Journal and cannot be returned.

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