Reupholstering a Chair

My mom gave me a chair that used to belong to my great grandmother. It is very sentimental to me because it was in my parents house while I was growing up but over the years the upholstery gave out and it had a tear right in the front of it. It needed to be recovered and I have issues with spending lots of money on something I'm not sure about. I couldn't pick a fabric that I loved and I didn't want to pay an upholster $300 to recover the chair.

 I came across a post on pinterest where a lady at Cottage and Vine recovered her chair with a drop cloth and I thought "I can do that".

I bought some fabric on clearance and started tearing apart the chair.

I kept the fabric I took off to use as a pattern and I took pictures as I went so I could remember what the chair looked like before. 

My sewing machine broke right before I attempted this so I just made cording by using fabric glue. I used my husbands staple gun to put the seat of the chair on.

I then covered the existing back chair cushion with fabric and sewed the center lines by hand.  I'm not going to lie, it was hard work.  I about gave up several times (my husband thought I was crazy the whole time) but I stuck with it and it turned out pretty good.  My husband thinks I should open an upholstery business now and I got a "new" chair for about $40.

It's not perfect.  Far from it but it filled an empty corner and I'm pretty proud that I recovered a chair all by myself.

Do a Dot Activities

I've seen Do a Dot markers on several blogs and there were lots of great learning activities you can do with them but  I never could bring myself to spend the $15 plus shipping on them.   I ended up just using bingo markers that I found at Meijers instead.  The bingo markers worked okay but often times left a mess on my table and my kids.  Yesterday I was at Home Goods and I stumbled upon some Do a Dots!  I had to get them and I'm glad I did!  This morning the kids had a race to see who could make different letters the fastest.  For my three year old I wrote the letter on his paper for him to trace and my five year old did it on his own.  This worked great and seemed to keep the game even.  Once they tired of that my five year old made his own pictures while my youngest wanted to make some numbers.  After making numbers I wrote the alphabet randomly on a sheet of paper and then called out different letters for him to find a put a dot on.  He really liked this game and it helped him with his letter recognition.  I love that the markers didn't leak through the paper like the bingo markers always did and that they are washable when they get on the kids.  Overall I would recommend getting the Do a Dots if you have the money but if not be on the lookout for a good deal on some.