Vintage Chair Is A Time Capsule

This is one of my more recent thrift store finds.   I've started to track down the era for this chair and as you can see; it's quite ornate.  The top of the shield back is intricately scrolled and the arm rests resemble lion's paws.  The legs are wonderfully turned.

 There's work to be done to restore it, but it's mostly minor.  Loose joints to be clamped and re-glued and a few small pieces of the veneer on the shield back are missing, but I've got an old sheet of walnut veneer that I can use to patch those areas.

 I decided to gently take the old furniture tacks out and strip the fabric layers back one by one.  And yes...I saved the old tacks.  I told you I never throw anything away!
This was like going through an archaeological dig with multiple layers of fabric from the past.

Now, to me this is the real challenge.  After I got down to the real nitty gritty; I was thrilled to see that the original beautiful wool needlework seat cover had been left intact. Sadly, part of the floral design was gone due to years of wear.  I give thanks to the former owner who decided to cover it over instead of ripping it off and throwing it away.

 I took the previous picture and ran it through photo editing software to pull out the 'ghost' of the missing yarn.  This gives me a better idea of what the missing flowers would have looked like.

Now off I go to try and track down a similar design in all of the antique/vintage cross stitch or other needlework patterns out there to bring this baby back to it's former glory.
Wish me luck!

Pamela

Well....I'm back.  That took some digging around in the interwebs.  I finally came across this needlepoint design that I might be able to adapt to this chair seat.

It's close enough to give me an idea of what the original flowers might have been.  Especially the blue ones.
After I completely removed the seat cover and was able to see the reverse side, it gave a better look of the original colors of the yarn.

Look how clear and bright those colors are!  Now I can rummage through that stash of yarn I've been hoarding for thirty years and see if I can come up with a match.
Now that I've had a chance to study the reverse side of the needlepoint pattern, I believe the missing threads may have been clusters of leaves in the design and not flowers.  What do you think?
I think I might go with that one and not try for a busier pattern in florals.  Sometimes less is better.

A nice winter project when the cold weather chases me out of my garden!

DIY Five-Board Bench From Salvaged Wood

I've previously mentioned the opportunity to get in and grab some wood from an old barn that was being torn down.  Here's a five-board bench I made from some of the wood.

The barn  was made of hickory, oak, pecan and poplar that was milled from his  land back in the early 1900s. This was in the rural part of Newberry SC and a lot of the local farms were in the family for generations and a good many of them had set up their own sawmills for their personal use.  Growing up in West Virginia, my father being a talented metal worker, constructed his own sawmill in order to build our out-buildings from trees on our land, but that's another story.

The wood we salvaged from the Prosperity farm is now sitting in our garage, waiting to be used in future projects. 
A woodworker's heaven!