Woven chair seats evoke pioneer times and state living, a time in which easy, homemade furnishings, fashioned from whatever was at hand, were life’s luxuries. Today, a woven chair seat is a lavish. That wrapped-around and crisscrossed web of grasses or rushes can be more expensive than the original chair. Thus, if your seat underside has seen a few too many seams, contemplate paper as the stealth choice to give the chair fresh life. Paper rush is fiber created from twisted strands of paper — cellulose with all the strength of a mighty tree — however a price tag almost as lightweight as tissue.
Pick the basic wrap-around weave for the first effort. Chair seat patterns are classic, whether you use reed, seagrass or paper rush. For a seat seat more rectangular than square, then adjust the design to cover the whole frame.
Start at the left front corner in front of you as you face the seat. Catch a 3- to 4-inch end dangling and wrap a ball above the front rail, around, under and over to the left rail, around and under. Run that strand throughout the front of the seat, next to the front rail, to this corner of the ideal rail.
Pull the ball above, around and below the ideal rail and upwards over also the front rail. Then run the strand along the ideal rail to the back rail and repeat the wrap pattern at the corner.
Continue around and about the seat seat framework, tightly packing the strands along with the flat end of a screwdriver to maintain the seat strong and snug.
Stuff crumpled paper or corrugated cardboard triangles into the space formed between the lower and upper strands. A tight weave doesn’t need this reinforcement, so it is generally a matter of personal preference.
Fill in the open middle section left when your seat isn’t square, as the shorter rails or side dowels are packed using strands and the more rails have a difference. Fix it by weaving a string of paper rush over a rail, to the middle of this gap, and below the perpendicular strands. Just take the active ball from the center to the opposite rail underneath up over that contrary rail back to the middle, and under the cross grasses to the first rail.
Keep running the ball above, under, around, above, etc. until the whole long rail of the seat frame is covered, and there’s a tight woven center to the seat seat. Tack, tie off or glue the raw ends of the grasses to the bottom side of the seat frame.
Be sure long life for all your hard work by painting or spraying the paper rush seat with a protective clear coat. Refresh this clear coat from time to time, depending on the amount of work with the seat gets, and also the seat may outlast the weaver.
