Midwinter Break Part III Green Chairs

This is yet another piece that I will use both in my wedding and at home around my breakfast table. I found a set of four of these chairs at Goodwill for about $6 a piece. They are extremely well-built, unique chairs and they're actually made in Poland! Since Bartek is from Poland, that warmed my heart and I knew that I was simply meant to find them.I love bright colors, and I love fabric, so I decided to join forces and use this amazing Amy Butler upholstery print I found. I could only afford about a half a yard, so I thought that this would be a great way to use the fabric.

After painting the chairs an apple green, I used the heavyduty modpoge to attach the fabric to the seat of the chair!

side table

Since it is an outdoor affair and the weather is sure to be beautiful, one of the visions I have for my wedding is to have various seating arrangements besides the typical round dinner table for people to sit and chat while watching someone play croquet. So here I am again, planning to use things that will work later in our house. A beautiful vintage sidetable. At my wedding, this will be placed between two brightly colored chairs (coming soon) on the lawn. After the wedding, this will go between our couch (coming soon) and armchair.

Our future house (Bart is living there now) is less than a mile from Goodwill. So I often sneak over there on the way to the house. I love looking for long forgotten pieces with incredible potential. This was one such beauty I found for $7. It has actually been sitting in our living room since Bart moved in and I figured its time to refinish it so he can stop questioning my taste! First I removed the ring from the bottom. It seemed unnecessary and was making it wobble.

Second task, sand down the top. The sides of the table have a strange laminate coating, but I could tell from the top (thanks to the incredible amount of wear & tear that underneath the shiny coating was some wood with a beautiful grain. This sanded beautifully, though unfortunately the ring around the edge was a wood facade and a piece of it chipped off, revealing whatever wood composite they used for the rest of the table.

After sanding it down, I simply put down 3-4 coats of black wood stain. I chose black because I wanted it to turn out a super dark black-brown color and I'm so happy with the result! It looks smashing with my purple lamp sitting on top.

Luncheon Napkins

Today I am making napkins for my wedding luncheon. I thought about renting napkins..costs money and I'm already over my budget, thought about buying paper napkins...okay but a little boring. Then I thought about this really great king-sized sheet I got at a thrift store that was the perfect sort of fabric for napkins!
So to make my napkins, I took the sheet and tore it into 17" inch squares. The great thing about cotton fabrics is that it tears on grain, so I don't have to measure each square and cut by hand. Next, I serged all the edges of each napkin. I used a 3-thread rolled serge with "sour apple" colored thread.
After doing that, I went through all my fabric scraps and picked out pieces with flowers I could applique onto each napkin. I used wonder-under so I wouldn't have to stitch them on. Wonder-under is truly a wonder. I ironed it onto the wrong side of my fabric, then cut each flower out using small scissors, so I basically ended up with a big pile of fabric patches.
Once I was done serging and ironing all my napkins, I peeled off the backing and ironed them on to the corner of my napkin. In the end, I'll tie them with a brightly colored grosgrain ribbon, and voila! Spring is here! I'm so excited for the color that this is going to add to the table settings!