Ikea fabric love - no 1.

I unashamedly love Ikea fabrics. Recently I read a post where a crafter noted that there seems to be a stigma about using Ikea fabrics. I think she's right but it's also crazy - in my opinion they are fantastic; they are generally made from cotton, the weight of many is heavy enough for projects around the home, it's very affordable and most importantly, there are some beautiful designs. So I thought I'd show you some of my favourites around our house.



The chair above was given to us (with another, both covered in white cotton), by our lovely next door neighbours when I was heavily pregnant with no. 3. As anyone who's spent time with a pregnant woman knows, she's generally a powerhouse of ideas and activity ("nesting"?), though physically it's hard as she's meant to be resting! Needless to say, I HAD to recover the 2 chairs at 39 weeks pregnant, and stayed up until about 1am two nights running to get it done. Hey, I wasn't going to be getting much sleep soon anyway! And here's one of the recovered chairs (show you the other later).

The fabric
Heavy weight cotton Dala Horse pattern. I bought a few meters of this fantastic fabric about 8 years ago just because I loved it (you know that feeling), certain that the right project would one day arise.



When my first baby arrived and I started to decorate her room I pulled it out of the stash and considered:
• curtains (no, fabric would spend most of it's time pushed to the side of the window, unable to be seen),
• cushions (no, not enough of the full illustrations would be seen)
• doona cover (no, fabric too heavy duty).



Then the chairs came along and bingo! I knew this was the project! I had to hold myself back long enough to A. buy upholstery tacks B. buy Scotchguard so that my hard work wouldn't be dirtied in 5 minutes and C. take a breath and think about how I would approach it. It ended up being incredibly easy and very satisfying, and most importantly I LOVE it.

I really strongly feel that it's good for us to live with things that we love looking at. Good for the soul!

* stripey curtain fabric in background also Ikea :-)