Whew! This one took a while, and I'm really glad it's done.
It all started early this fall when I saw this child's rocker at a furniture exhibit. It was so simple - just four pieces of wood. The idea of making one for Z just kept nagging me - how hard could it be? I've worked with wood before, I'm not afraid of power tools. It wouldn't even take that much wood. Well, it would have been easy if I would have stuck to a simple design, but of course, I couldn't do that, that would be sensible.
Never able to leave well enough alone, I of course had to redesign the whole thing first and make it far more complicated before I was happy with it. Oh, and of course, don't forget I’ve never made a piece of furniture before or even made anything out of birch plywood more complicated than a painting panel, but that’s never stopped me before. That’s the problem with obsessive crafting disorder – there’s no reasoning with it.
Whenever starting an unfamiliar project, my first step is always to find a completed project that is similar (at least in structure) to what I want to make. I had the inspiration chair, but I wasn’t able to take measurements of it. For the size of the seat, angle of the back, curve of the rocker, etc., I needed more information. Luckily, I found this instructional to fill in those gaps. All of the structural measurements I got from that chair. As long as I kept those the same on my chair, it would function properly and I could change everything else to fit my own design.
My next step is always to plan. This can go on for ages - anywhere from a couple of hours to months. I make sketches and measured drawings. After staring at the inspiration chair for a while, the sides started to remind me of wings. Eventually, the idea of a butterfly came into my mind. I found some examples on the web butterfly chairs, including this one. After blending all these ideas, I came up with the basic design for my chair.
My next step was to go to the computer and overlay my design and the structural drawings from the instructional using a scanner and Photoshop. Once I was happy with these, I bought a 1/4" thick piece of MDF and made a pattern for one side and one half of the back using a jig saw.
For the finished piece, I chose 3/4" Birch plywood. I rough cut the outside of each piece using the jig saw, and then finished cutting them by clamping the pattern to the underside of the birch and using a flush trim bit on the router (after first drilling pilot holes in each section) which copies your pattern exactly. After each piece was cut, I rounded over every exposed edge with the router and cut dadoes for the pieces to fit together per the instructional using a straight cut bit.
It was a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with it. The finish isn't exactly what I hoped (amber shellac), but I can always go back and paint it later it it's still bugging me. For now, I'm just happy to call it done.
Merry Christmas and happy crafting!
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What I'm working on now: learning needle felting
What I'm thinking about working on after that: birch lap desk
Here's my second attempt at furniture - a fun little table and chairs for Zoe's second birthday. When I started looking around for ideas for this project, I came across a fantastic set from Left Hand Make. It was georgous, and really inspired me to think carefully about the design and try to come up with a beautiful, functional, and timeless design. It's something we all need to remember. Objects can be art. It takes more time and energy (or money if it was someone elses's time and energy), but the end result is so much more satisfying than something that was mass produced by a machine.
