The cutest little armchair.

 

I decided I needed a relaxing armchair for the mini shed.  Now, this was something I had never done before so it was going to totally be something new for me.

I found a rather long and in-depth blog post on making a small dolls house armchair, so thought I would use that and scale it up a bit to suit my 1:6 scale.

You can find that blog post HERE if you fancy a go yourself.

I find it difficult to read large blocks of text, so I worked most of mine out by using the photos alone… and I didn’t bother with any of the trimmings and piping as I thought it was cute enough without it  😊

I started off with the remainder of the foam board that I had used for the flooring in my mini shed, and drew out a pattern that mimicked the one on the tutorial as best I could.  It is quite easy to cut foamboard in straight lines, but small curves are a bit trickier.

Once that was cut out I had to cut out some squares enough to make the height of the chair seat, I glued the layers together and left them overnight to stick.

After sticking the front and back in place, I cut two pieces of wooden dowel to use for arms.

At this point too, after realising how quickly the wood glue set at sticking the dowel in place, I ditched the PVA glue and used wood glue for the rest of the project.

After the dowel fitting I had to fill in the sides with strips of foam board, then cover the sides of the arms with card.

Now, it looks like a chair!

Next was to cover it in fabric. It needed to be done bit by bit as it was so cleverly designed that the next bit covered the last.  I was quite impressed with how it all worked out.

And… let me talk about the glue again.  I had dug out my book-binding glue which I have used for cartonage in the past, thinking that this would be the best thing for fabric onto paper.  But, alas, it was rock solid!  The lid hadn’t been put on properly and there was no reviving it. I went to order a new tub off the internet and it was now double the price!  Well, sod that… I decided to use the wood glue.  And it was brilliant!  It was just as good as the book binding glue that costs at least twice as much (or four times as much if you pay todays prices!)

After covering the chair completely, all that was left to do was to make a cushion.  With lots of padding to make it all spongy and comfortable.

I have to say, I am quite pleased with the outcome.  Not sure I would make another though; it took around five hours spread out over three days to make.  There’s a lot of drying and waiting involved.  But the finished product was worth it.

The fabric I chose was craft related, and although I planned to have it all facing the correct way, I was pleasantly surprised how key elements of the print showed at the right places to give maximum impact.

Having spent five hours on this, the whole project is now up to 40 hours!