Chair seat weaving overview, description and explanation of the various types of seatweaving; caning, rush, natural rush, splint, Danish cord, seagrass.
Weaving a Pretwisted Natural Rush Seat October 21, 2016 Recently I purchased this French Provincial Chair from Craigslist. I was looking for a chair to weave a pre-twisted rush seat. I would guess …
How to weave a Danish Cord seat using Danish Cord
Weaving a Pretwisted Natural Rush Seat October 21, 2016 Recently I purchased this French Provincial Chair from Craigslist. I was looking for a chair to weave a pre-twisted rush seat. I would guess …
Step-by-step directions by Cathryn Peters on how to process cattail leaves after gathering them for chair seat and basket weaving projects.
Certain types of ladder back chairs used woven rawhide seats. These are usually found in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. They are very similar to their southeastern cousins that were wov…
When he makes chairs, David Johnson blends the best techniques learned in a career studying and restoring chairs with woven seats.
by Tim Johnson Visit any antique or second-hand furniture store and you’ll find great old chairs—such as these solid cherry ladderbacks—that are bargain priced because their woven seats have worn out.
Step-by-step directions by Cathryn Peters on how to process cattail leaves after gathering them for chair seat and basket weaving projects.
Designed by Judy PagelsSometimes I need an incentive to make a “someday” project into a “now” project. Schacht had an employee makers' challenge this past fall, and it motivated me to pursue and complete a simple chair restoration. The twist: I wove inkle bands to replace the chair seat.The chair has a simple design and I remember it being in our house when I was a little girl. At some point, it became mine and eventually the seat disintegrated. I stored it away for years, always intending to make a replacement seat in natural cord similar to the original—until inkle weaving entered my life! I have a fondness for uncommon decadence, so it was not a big leap for me to think that a woven seat of inkle bands would be just the thing for the chair.I have not been an inkle weaver for very long. In 2019, I took a class at a local yarn shop and loved the simplicity of the loom and process. Then Annie MacHale published her book In Celebration of Plain Weave: Color and Design Inspiration for Inkle Weavers. I indeed found immediate inspiration—just as the title promised—and decided to pursue more inkle weaving. The patterns in her book were created using the online Band Weaving Pattern Editor at http://www.raktres.net/seizenn/editor.htmlI started to use this pattern editor myself, turning out pattern after pattern. Designing with it is so much fun, it’s hard to stop and settle on a final design. Finally, I created an asymmetrical design that seemed perfect for my chair restoration project.The seat required 5 vertical bands and 6 horizontal bands. I determined that weaving 4 bands at the maximum capacity of the Schacht Inkle Loom (about 8-1/2 feet) would give me plenty of yardage. Each band is about 1-7/8" wide, made with 3/2 mercerized cotton.Project DetailsFinished size: 4 bands, each 1-7/8" wide x 102" long
I made a new seat for an old chair this week. In a sweltering cobwebbed corner of my mom and dad’s attic, I found what I’d abandoned there years before: a small chair too big for a tiny…
Weave furniture design blends traditional techniques and modern trends in decorating with handmade items
The Delaware chair in the May/June 2018 issue of Woodworker's Journal features a unique seat. Once you've completed the project, check out author Kerry Pierce’s instructions on how to create the traditional splint seat.
Discover how the revered Danish designer Hans J. Wegner's most iconic modern chair design, the Wishbone chair, is made from scratch by skilled craftsman at the Carl Hansen & Søn headquarters in Gelsted, Denmark.
Favorite: #chairs by @pegwoodworking can't wait to use some of her work for a project. #weave #artistic #craftswoman #furniture #interiors #interiordesign
Designed by Judy PagelsSometimes I need an incentive to make a “someday” project into a “now” project. Schacht had an employee makers' challenge this past fall, and it motivated me to pursue and complete a simple chair restoration. The twist: I wove inkle bands to replace the chair seat.The chair has a simple design and I remember it being in our house when I was a little girl. At some point, it became mine and eventually the seat disintegrated. I stored it away for years, always intending to make a replacement seat in natural cord similar to the original—until inkle weaving entered my life! I have a fondness for uncommon decadence, so it was not a big leap for me to think that a woven seat of inkle bands would be just the thing for the chair.I have not been an inkle weaver for very long. In 2019, I took a class at a local yarn shop and loved the simplicity of the loom and process. Then Annie MacHale published her book In Celebration of Plain Weave: Color and Design Inspiration for Inkle Weavers. I indeed found immediate inspiration—just as the title promised—and decided to pursue more inkle weaving. The patterns in her book were created using the online Band Weaving Pattern Editor at http://www.raktres.net/seizenn/editor.htmlI started to use this pattern editor myself, turning out pattern after pattern. Designing with it is so much fun, it’s hard to stop and settle on a final design. Finally, I created an asymmetrical design that seemed perfect for my chair restoration project.The seat required 5 vertical bands and 6 horizontal bands. I determined that weaving 4 bands at the maximum capacity of the Schacht Inkle Loom (about 8-1/2 feet) would give me plenty of yardage. Each band is about 1-7/8" wide, made with 3/2 mercerized cotton.Project DetailsFinished size: 4 bands, each 1-7/8" wide x 102" long
Weave Chair Seats With Paracord: It's fairly easy to find old wooden chairs with broken out seat bottoms. Often the chair frame is solid, but no one is interested in reweaving the rush bottom. When I found 5 old chairs in the rafters of a barn I decided to hack them with paracord!…
If you’ve got an old chair with a gross seat, or one with no seat at all, but you still love the chair – don’t worry! All is not lost. With about an hour
Weaving a Pretwisted Natural Rush Seat October 21, 2016 Recently I purchased this French Provincial Chair from Craigslist. I was looking for a chair to weave a pre-twisted rush seat. I would guess …
I made a new seat for an old chair this week. In a sweltering cobwebbed corner of my mom and dad’s attic, I found what I’d abandoned there years before: a small chair too big for a tiny…
Weave Chair Seats With Paracord: It's fairly easy to find old wooden chairs with broken out seat bottoms. Often the chair frame is solid, but no one is interested in reweaving the rush bottom. When I found 5 old chairs in the rafters of a barn I decided to hack them with paracord!…
Sitting comfortably? From piano keys to traffic signs, check out these creative upcycled chairs made from repurposed materials
How-to article on identifying woven seat patterns -- at least five different types of woven chair seat patterns and designs.
Weave Chair Seats With Paracord: It's fairly easy to find old wooden chairs with broken out seat bottoms. Often the chair frame is solid, but no one is interested in reweaving the rush bottom. When I found 5 old chairs in the rafters of a barn I decided to hack them with paracord!…
A few months ago my beautiful mother-in-law passed away very suddenly. She had many beautiful pieces of furniture -- mementos of her travels and of a life well lived.... aaaaand she had a few not so beautiful pieces. In the days before her funeral, her seven children flew out from every corner of the country and began the heart-breaking task of sorting through her belongings. The children took turns selecting items they wanted to keep, then they decided which items to donate and which items to put in the huge dumpster that had been delivered to the house. When I arrived in town, I saw this poor little stool in the dumpster and made my husband crawl in there and get it out. Over the years, the rush seat had busted out and had been upholstered over in black vinyl (badly). The legs had gotten a bit marred up, and the joints had all come loose. It was no wonder that it had been tossed in the dumpster. I had lovely memories of my mother-in-law sitting on that stool at the head of the picnic table in her kitchen at mealtime (when you have seven children, sometimes a picnic table is the only way to squeeze all the kids in). My husband remembers standing inside the upside-down stool as a small child, and "walking" the stool across the floor. That might explain the busted out seat.... We brought the stool back to Seattle with us and got an estimate to have the seat rewoven and the stool re-glued. It was going to cost nearly $400! Yikes! I decided to restore the stool myself. Before deconstructing the stool, I took lots of photos of how the seat was woven together. I also watched a couple of you-tube videos. Over. And over. And over. Next, I cut off all the old rush and cleaned up the frame. After labeling all the joints (very important), I wiggled the frame apart, and cleaned the dried glue out of the joints. Then it was time to re-glue the stool. To hold the stool together really tightly while the glue dried, I wound strong cording around the stool base several times, then tied it off. Next, I twisted a small flashlight around and around in the cording until it was very tight, then propped it against one of the stringers on the chair to keep it from unwinding. I used a flashlight because it was handy, but a pen or dowel of some sort would work just fine. When the glue was completely dry, it was time to reweave the seat. I used Commonwealth Basket Fibre Rush 6/32-Inch 2-Pound Coil, Kraft (approximately 210-Feet)that I ordered from Amazon.com. This is a paper fiber that is very easy to work with. It comes in a big coil, and you just cut off as much as you can handle at a time. Each piece of rush needs to soak in warm water for a couple of minutes to soften it and make it workable. By "a couple" of minutes, I mean literally just a couple of minutes. If you soak it for too long, the paper fibers start to get fuzzy and weird. When you pull off your working piece, keep it in a coil and tape the end of the piece to itself to prevent tangling. Otherwise, you can end up with a jumbled up mess like this: When you first begin, you need to nail or staple the end of the fiber rush to the frame. Then, you just knot the ends of the cord together as necessary. Plan your knots so that they are on the underside of the seat, and tuck them out of the way, as you work. Sometimes you need a third hand, so clips or clamps will come in handy. I used these giant clips, but clamps from the hardware store would have been a better choice. Every now and then my clips would pop off the chair frame and go flying across the room! Probably not the safest way to work.... Periodically, you need to nudge the cords over to keep your weave nice and tight. I did not use the right tool for this, either. For some inexplicable reason, a ball-peen hammer was the closest thing at hand, so I used that for "nudging". Once you get the "over/ back up through the middle" rhythm it gets easier. About midway through, you will want to cut some triangles of corrugated cardboard and slide them between the layers of rush in your seat. Do this on the topside and the underside. This fills in the gap between the layers, giving the seat a fuller appearance, and it also helps prevent wear and tear to the fibers where they might rub against the edge of the seat frame. My seat is not perfect, and at some point I managed to change weave direction altogether, but nobody seems to notice the imperfections. My husband's siblings love the transformation, and seeing the restored stool has prompted them to share their own stories of how they used and abused the stool when they were little! My husband thinks I'm the most amazing person ever for having figured out the mystery of how to weave a seat. Lets not tell him, I learned it all on YouTube, okay? Here is the video tutorial that I found the most helpful. Happy weaving! disclosure: this post contains affiliate links
I had a client with a family heirloom that wanted nothing more than to have the chair seat, that went with the set I was painting, re-weaved. This client knew…
I made a new seat for an old chair this week. In a sweltering cobwebbed corner of my mom and dad’s attic, I found what I’d abandoned there years before: a small chair too big for a tiny…
When he makes chairs, David Johnson blends the best techniques learned in a career studying and restoring chairs with woven seats.
Weaving a Pretwisted Natural Rush Seat October 21, 2016 Recently I purchased this French Provincial Chair from Craigslist. I was looking for a chair to weave a pre-twisted rush seat. I would guess …
Step-by-step directions by Cathryn Peters on how to process cattail leaves after gathering them for chair seat and basket weaving projects.
