Wednesday 30 November 2011

Wannabe Bokja chair covers

Ok, I realise I'm flattering myself by drawing any parallels at all between the work of the wonderfully talented Lebanese design studio, Bokja, and my own limited forays into the world of soft furnishings, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

I first came across Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri's work on fffffound! back in August, and was immediately smitten. Almost as immediate was the unfortunate realization that I'm unlikely ever to be able to afford one of their beautiful pieces in my home, so I set about trying to make my own, (loosely) inspired by their colourful, patchwork designs.

We have two chairs in our living room that looked like this (excuse my dirty floor and part of Mr H's "inflatable architecture" project hiding behind the cabinet):


They're both identical in form, though not in colour, and pretty comfortable.

I'd never made any kind of slipcover before, and thought these might be a fairly simple shape to start with. Well, yes and no. The back cushion is curved and I struggled a little to hug this curve with the covering, but in hindsight I realize that all I probably needed was some darts in the fabric. Maybe one day I'll get around to fixing that...

I bought a couple pieces of fabric specially for this project, but mostly used scraps that I had lying around. One of these was Michael Miller's French Journal (below), which I'd been saving for a copy-cat Anthropologie apron, so I was a little sad to use it up, but in the end I really liked how it worked with the rest of the patchwork. (See what I mean about the fabric not lying flush against the curvature of the cushion? Very annoying.)



One of the things I really liked about Bokja's pieces was their use of complimentary colours. I like things to clash a little bit :) So I did one chair in pink, lime green, and mustart, and one in coral, mustard and turquoise. I'm not going to pretend I have the expertise to post a tutorial here; I'll skip straight to the finished products:




Now we just need some cushions...

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