bringing an old rocking chair back to life!

While we were all in Madison a few weekends ago, us girls spent an afternoon out thrift shopping. I love that  our form of quality time is going thrift shopping to see what kind of good bargains and old deals we can find....we usually find some pretty awesome and quality things which I'm always impressed by! So I was just browsing when my eyes laid upon a cute and perfectly old rocking chair. It was screaming my name actually. I promptly walked over to it, made myself comfortable and immediately claimed it as SOLD to ME! I just knew that I had to have it for Peanut's nursery. What kind of nursery doesn't have a classic rocking chair?! The cushions were definitely outdated so I knew I would want to do something about them but for the cool price of $25, we could not pass the beauty up! It was in great condition with no big knicks out of it anywhere or broken off wood pieces! Score! Thankfully my parents were coming back to stay at our place in North Liberty so we managed to fit the chair into their car so we could bring it home with us that weekend! I have been surfing the net for nursery ideas and I think we have it narrowed down to what we like and what we want to go with...I really like the ones with neutral colored walls and then bright vibrant colors paired with several mix-n-match bold patterns. Modern but still classic and so cute for a baby! With that in mind, I made a trip to Hobby Lobby last week to find some fabric to update the chair cushions and was pleasantly surprised with what they had in store....sooo many bright colors, fun patterns and awesome designs!!!! Perfect! I picked out the aqua chevron that was "duck canvas" fabric because I thought it would be more sturdy and hold up better for chair cushions! I scoured the website for a tutorial and how-to for recovering the cushions and couldn't find any that I really liked so I basically did my own thing. I didn't measure anything (sorry Mom, I completely ignored your tip of "measure twice and cut once!) and I didn't make a pattern...just winged it and thankfully, it all worked out! All in all, the chair only cost $40 total ($25 for the chair, $10 for the fabric, $5 for the batting) which is a steal considering how much a brand new rocker or glider would cost! I think I will still keep my eyes out for a bigger lounge type chair for the nursery too because Jordan says the rocker is too small for him...perfect size though for me and Peanut!

Paisley being no help whatsoever...
she kept trying to fluff up the batting and would lay on it!

the finished project! the bottom left is what I started with...
and then I redid the cushions and squared them off!
I also added arm cushions and side pockets!