I’m very excited to share the Patchwork Bench I made from
Anna Graham of Noodlehead’s book, Handmade Style. The book is full of great
projects, easy to customize to your tastes. I kept admiring the projects Anna
was posting online, then finally bought the book. I decided to make a Patchwork Bench
following her pattern, and I made a few changes to make it more affordable.
I used a charm pack of Paradiso by Kate Spain along with
some Robert Kaufman chambray in indigo that I had in my stash. I mixed in some
of the chambray in the top, to take out some of the pink fabrics. Combined with
a medium interfacing, the cover seems sturdy enough.
To make the base, we found a scrap of 3/4” plywood big
enough. We also had an old, broken chair with decent legs, so we cut the legs
off the use. They got a light sanding, a coat of KILZ, then two coats of paint
(also all on hand). We used the drill press to drill a hole in the top of each leg and screwed in hanger bolts. Those screwed right in to the mounting plates.
I was having trouble finding affordable foam for the bench
and looked around for other options. At the big box fabric store, it cost $60!
I ended up getting a double bed-sized foam mattress pad from Walmart for $15.
Much better. It was flat on one side and textured on the other, but I just put
the textured sides together to make it flat. The foam cut nicely into 6 pieces the size of the bench with very little leftover – perfect!
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| She came in to investigate why I was moving furniture around, so I let her sit on the bench since she was in the shot anyway. |
I used cotton batting that I already had. I wanted to wrap the batting around all sides and it was thin, so I used a double layer of batting to wrap the length and a double layer to wrap the width. The fabric cover went on very smoothly!
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| If your bookshelves aren't stacked like this, you must not be reading enough ;) |
This was a great project, fun and pretty easy to put together. I'm thrilled with the results and look forward to finding a home for it :)
It's so cute! How clever to use one of those foam mattress toppers - I never would have thought of that despite the fact that I've had the same "you've got to be kidding me" reaction to the price of foam for craft projects like this.
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