A savvy shopper managed to save £3,000 by transforming an old armchair she bought in a charity shop in Wythenshawe for £20. Jessica Hilton took inspiration from designs she saw online and upcycled the chair herself using boucle material and a fabric stapler.
The 22-year-old, who designs clothes for her business, found the chair in the Tree of Life shop in Wythenshawe and she purchased it for £20. She’d had her eye on boucle armchairs online but they cost around £3,000, so she decided to recreate one for herself.
She paid another £30 for the material to cover the chair while the fabric stapler was £8. The project took her a couple of days to complete and it saved her £2,942.
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Jessica said: "I make clothes for a living, I design my own clothes for my business. I have made clothes in the past and when I wanted a boucle armchair and I looked online and they were like £3,000 but I was like, I could make one of them.
"I am a thrifter anyway, I love a charity shop and a car boot, I went to the local charity shop and saw the chair for £20. I paid £30 for the fabric on Etsy and £8 for the upholster stapler, it was all pretty easy to be honest.
"I am really pleased with how it turned out, it looks quite expensive considering it only cost me around £50 and it really goes well with my interior - I'm really pleased with the results."
The business owner said that upcycling the chair took her a few days as she had to also look after her son, Nate, 14 months, but said she could have done it in a few hours if she did it all in one go.
She added: "First I took a seam ripper and ripped all the chair, stripping it of its fabric.
"After that, I laid my boucle fabric down and I used the pattern pieces from the old fabric, put it on my new fabric and drew around them and cut them out. Then I just sewn them all up on the sewing machine, it was almost like a jumper for the chair and it fit nicely on separate places and where it was loose I used an upholster stapler."
In total, Jessica spent £58 on the chair and saved thousands in the process. Jessica said that she would do more upcycling now she knows how easy it is to do.
She said: "Now I know how easy it is and how good looks I probably will do it again. When I suggested it, my boyfriend was like 'yeah, it might look alright' and when I finished it he was surprised with how good it looked - it is a lot easier than making clothes.
"With clothes, there are different sized and a lot more different measurements, if you are upcycling something that has already been made you just use the measurements from the chair."
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