Sunday, September 7, 2008

Lotus blossoms in my sewing room

I have a very practical and very unattractive chair in my sewing room that I have thought about recovering for some time. The photo shows that its unappealing appearance can easily be discerned. My thoughts had not yet resulted in any observable actions when last July Kay of the Mason-Dixon blog suggested starting a Ravelry group devoted to the idea of knitting upholstery. This was the very spark I needed to help me make the decision about how I was going to prettify my chair. I would knit new upholstery (or perhaps more aptly, slipcovers) for it.

As I still had a very large Kaffe Fassett-esque "magic ball" and a similarly large ball of beige/taupe yarn of a similar weight, the decision about yarn and colours was already made. I looked through my Kaffe Fassett Pattern Library book and chose the large Damask Flower design, which after blowing up on a photocopy machine several times turned out to be very close to the proportions of my chair seat. I was off and running on getting a new look for my old chair.

I have chosen to call this the Thousand-Petaled Lotus Chair Seat - the 1,000 petalled lotus symbolizes absolute reality, and a place where consciousness enters into a new realm of perception. As I spend so much of my creative and restorative time in this chair it seems to be the perfect image to use on my chair seat.

I haven't decided yet what exactly I will do for the sides of the seat, or for the back. I'm really winging it on this one so it will be an ever-changing project as I progress on it. At some point I will run out of one or the other yarns so it will be an eclectic project as well.

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