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Bamboozled

I love my home office chair, which my guy gave me for my birthday back in the Jurassic era, I think. It's past time to replace it, but it still works fine. Also, I've written pretty close to two hundred novels while sitting in it, and even restarted my career seven years ago from it, so it's kind of a lucky charm.

My dogs have always loved my chair too, which accounts for the hole at the front of the seat. It used to be covered in black vinyl, by the way, which was so thin it just began cracking and flaking off. Many years and four dogs later, it's grown pretty shabby-looking. I've always wanted to recover it, so last month I decided to try making for it some custom slip covers (which, please note, I have never before made.)

Last year I picked up a few yards of an awesome VIP bamboo print from a vintage textile seller, and I've been saving it for something special. This fabric dates back to the 80's but is just as crisp and sturdy as if it had been made yesterday.

I didn't have a pattern to follow, so I just figured it out myself. I always save that crappy paper that stores wrap around glass objects before bagging them, which is almost as thin as pattern paper. Fitting it to the chair and trimming it was easy enough, and now I have a custom pattern to use if I want to make another set.

The finished chair. I added some extra padding to the seat from my stash of batting scraps, and used leftover mask-making elastic to gather the edges. It's not perfect, of course, but it looks much better, and I hope will help it last a few more years.

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