This Old Oak Chair Has a Seating Capacity of 900 – More or Less

One chair. 900 vintage chenille quilt squares?!

You can figure out lots of things – if you’ve got the brain for math.

Flashbacks to math class still give me nightmares…okay, the basics, like addition, multiplication and fractions were doable.

But then things started escalating.

Remember those math questions (ha, they were actually paragraphs), and you were supposed to read through a fictional story and solve the problem? For instance, if two trains are traveling at “x” miles per hour, one from destination A, the other from destination B, which are ‘x’ miles apart, how long will it take the trains to reach their objective?

My answer remains the same today as it did all those years ago: who cares?

A Marathon of Cutting Vintage Chenille Quilt Squares

I laughed to myself as the terrors of math class came back to me with each quilt square I stacked on my old oak banker’s chair. As the stack blossomed, I wondered how many I had cut during my marathon session.

It was one of those days when my gardening was done, I was too mentally drained to read, and I had a lot of things on my mind. Life was pulling at me in many directions.I needed to de-stress my distress.

Early on, I counted the squares, but then my mind wandered (like it did in math class) and I lost count. I thought of my old math teacher and chuckled, thinking she would have had a formula: if I measured the length, width, and height of the old chair, and then I figured the size and thickness of a quilt square, I could have an accurate total of how many squares I cut.

I laughed again. What fun would that be?

The joy was in digging through my totes packed with vintage chenille bedspread fabrics…

…feeling the assortment of old fabrics, and choosing colors and textures that caught my eye. The major problem was, they ALL caught my eye, and in working through all those weighty things on my mind, I ended up cutting over 900 squares.

I laughed as I maturely accepted the fact that I’d never be a math whiz. But I love chenille – all of it! The elegance of the Cabin Craft roses, the happy dots and pops of Morgan Jones, the large pops of a Vantona spread, the thick Hoffman daisies….oh, so many favorites!

The endless colors, patters, textures and oh-so-soft tufts are something that brings me great comfort. After hours of gently rolling the cutter, over and over, I noticed the stress disappeared, melting into the cutting mat. All those problems I thought I had took a back seat – where they belonged anyway.

When a major avalanche threatened to strike the old oak chair, I knew it was time to sweep up and call it done. The little squares are destined to be neatly tucked away in totes, to be with their other brothers and sisters, all awaiting the skilled hands of devoted sewers and quilters who will craft them into wondrous works of art.

Then, my bright kaleidoscope of chubby little chenille squares will do their magic all over again: when in the expert quilter’s hands, the creativity and joy felt in sewing will melt away the stresses of their world – and their cherished heirloom will be gifted to someone who will be embraced and soothed by the love in every thick and plush tuft.

Want to see the fruits of all that labor? Check out some of our newest sets of Charlotte’s Cozy Chenille Squares – your creativity is sure to be inspired!