At our house we have a thing for the Ikea PS arm chair. When we moved to Brisbane early last decade we bought one of these chairs, and proud of it we were too. A nice neat style, fitting right in with our Klippan couch, removable and washable cover...and then one day we thought we would get another (not sure why, maybe to keep the other one company), so we trekked out to Ikea and what do you know, the PS chair was discontinued, not more chairs, no more covers, nothing.
Again, for reasons that I can no longer remember we then turned to searching them out on Ebay. They were, and still are, very hard to find but about six years ago we found a pair being sold in Sydney with synthetic sheepskin covers (picture above). We bought them for a few dollars and then paid heaps to have them transported to Brisbane. It sounds totally stupid, it was, but we really love our PS chairs.
Late last year, in our new house and everything (and probably something to do with that thing called the "nesting instinct") I decided that our PS chairs needed fresh new covers. The fake sheepskin look was on one hand kind of retro, but on the other hand they had lost their best and were marked and worn and starting to disintegrate. See the picture, kinda gross with suspicious stains...
You can buy covers for these chairs from the Bemz website for about $35, but with nearly $30 of postage and four week wait for delivery why wouldn't you try to make your own for the cost of materials only? Well, why not, I say. One day I took one of the covers off and grabbed my seam ripper and started to rip that cover right apart. I made a few notes about what bits were stitched to what to get the order of assembly of a new cover right, and then traced around all the individual bits and pieces to make a pattern. I just set to making a new cover with no idea if it was going to work, and it worked absolutely perfectly. I'm pleased as punch!
Out of our three chairs I have so far covered two. One in a furnishing fabric from Spotlight, this one lives right now in our lounge room but would also be at home in our bedroom.
And one is covered in an Ikea fabric - this one is in the littlest boys room for night time feeding but it would also look good in the lounge room (not necessarily along side the floral cover though).
The third chair is in a corner in our bedroom with clothes all over it (a chair-robe if you will), but I do have plans to cover it in a plain white (or slightly off white) fabric so that it will go with either of these patterned ones. Sometimes if we have guests staying we have two of these chairs in the lounge so there is enough seating for everyone.
I'm so pleased to be giving these chairs a new lease on life, and without breaking the bank account either. Bravo!
I realize this is coming out of nowhere, so I apologize for that ... but .... I could certainly understand your being taken by those IKEA PS chairs. I too, could swoon. But I have no idea where to get them or how to. Any suggestions? You wrote that you've had them for awhile -- any chance they are still being made?
ReplyDelete