I Swore I Would Stop Trash Picking

     I swore I would stop trash picking until I saw an interesting chair out there on the roadside.  I asked permission to take it, and its owner gave it to me.  I discovered that this gem was from Ikea.  That means that it would be a snap to disassemble and re-assemble my find.  Most Ikea furniture comes flat packed.  The stuff is engineered to be easy to put together.
   

Here is my chair, just the frame.  It is very solid, but it is missing its cushion.

I suppose the correct tool would have been a hex wrench, but this star wrench worked.  I began taking things apart.

Hmm....What's going on here?

The joining requires two dows and a three piece screw assembly.  Interesting.  I separated all of the wood pieces and washed them with Pledge Wood Cleaner.  There was a nice finish under a layer of pollen.

Now I have a metal frame covered in a canvas or jute fabric.  I cut the fabric cover along the seams, so I could make a paper pattern.

This is what was underneath - the frame and a mesh seat.  I decided the sand off a little rust and to spray with gray primer. 

I didn't want to get paint on the mesh, so I covered it with cardboard.

I decided just a coat of primer would do.

The cover is just a fabric tube with the seam going up the center in the front.  The bottom of the tube is sewn shut.  The top is open.  You put the fabric cover on the metal frame like stuffing a pillow into a pillow case.

I made a paper pattern.  I had around four yards of linen-look decorator fabric in my stash.  Perfect.

I decided to cover the mesh seat so the dark color wouldn't show through.

This is the new cover for the frame.

I put the chair together and ruminated on what sort of cushion to make.

I went up into the attic and grabbed a giant garbage bag full of left over quilt batting.  I cut out and stacked several layers of batting for the seat cushion, back cushion, and head rest.  Then I made a giant pillow case.  I stuffed the bottom of the fabric tube with the stack of batting cut to seat cushion size.  I sewed a seam across the top of this segment to encase the batting.  Then I inserted the pile of batting that would serve as the back cushion and sewed a line of stitching across the top of this segment.  Finally, I stuffed the head rest, turned the excess fabric on the edge inward, and closed the top seam.  The original cushion was attached with a strip of velcro, but I didn't have any velcro.  I added a tie on each corner to attach the cushion to the frame.  This chair cost $0.00 to refurbish since all the material used is leftovers from past projects.