Trash to Treasure

A couple of weeks ago on my way out of the neighborhood I found this vintage baby doll highchair in my neighbors trash.  I feel in love!  I thought this would make the perfect Christmas gift for Madeline. 

Sorry I can't show you a photo of the whole chair.  Blogger is having vertical photo issues.  It had lots of damage.

But this is what it looks like now!

It was a labor of love!  I thought it would just be a quick paint job.  I was so wrong.  This thing has layers and layers of paint, mod podge, and glaze.  

The decals on the back were given to me by a good friend.  She bought them on e-bay.  They were so easy to use.  You just put them in warm water for a few seconds and when they peel off the protective paper you press them on.  If you love vintage you will definitely want to go check out her site here !  Even if you don't she's an amazing collage artist with lots of great ideas.  She just recently finished a play kitchen that is Sooo cute!  

I repaired the tray using decoupage.  I tried wood fill and it wouldn't smooth out so I ended up putting down mod podge, a sheet of scrap book paper, more mod podge, and then painted several layers to cover up the paper.  It worked better than I thought.  It's perfectly smooth and you can't tell there was ever paper added. 

The last thing I did was make the cushion.  My favorite part!  It took 10 minutes and I really love how it turned out!  I wanted the fabric to match the vintage look of the highchair so I tea stained it first.  You might want to search for a tutorial if you want to try this.  I'm sure there is a much more professional way than mine but I just put 4 tea bags in the microwave for 4 minutes with 4 cups of water.  When it was done I added the fabric and went and took a shower.  Maybe 20 minutes.  I took it out when I was done and threw it in the dryer.  You can see that some of it is stained darker than others.  I actually like that for this particular project.  

I made the pattern by tracing the seat.  For the cushion I cut 6 pattern pieces of quilt batting and basted them together. 

I used chenille for the back.

It fit snugly in the seat so I decided not to worry about adding ties.  What do you think?  Was it worth rescuing?