Let me introduce you to my new learning project:
Is it obvious that I found it on the side of the road?
I’ve wanted a good reading chair for a couple years, but brand new ones are too expensive. When I saw this chair, I thought, “Great, I’ll just reupholster it!” Then I laughed and told myself I’ve been watching too much HGTV. I’ve never reupholstered a chair, so I drove away.
But alas, three days later, the chair was still waiting for someone to take it home.
I brought my husband and my jeep, meaning I had someone to carry the chair and something to store it in. We live in a small apartment, so I planned to keep the chair in my car. Unfortunately, after a few days in the summer heat, my chair revealed its particularly unpleasant scent, so I took it to our storage unit.
To be honest, I forgot about my chair until now.
Now, I’m in the Education Technology graduate program at MSU, and one of my projects is to learn something new using solely online resources. If you’re like my mom, you might be thinking, “Why are you doing this for grad school?”
Well, Berger (2016) argues, “the comfortable expert must go back to being a restless learner” (p. 23). Too often teachers, who are experts in their fields, forget what it’s like to be students. We lose touch with the student experience, thereby overlooking our students’ interests and needs.
It’s time for me to be a ‘restless’ novice instead of an expert. In the end, I can use this learning experience to inform my teaching practice to make learning more accessible and engaging for my students, the novices I’m trying to reach.
I always say the best teachers are students at heart. Even though I’m used to being the teacher in the room, I’m excited to pull up a chair and be a student again.
My goal:
- Reupholster the chair in the photo above, which includes cleaning the chair, buying the right amount of fabric, measuring and cutting the pieces, etc.
- Document the journey with photos and videos.
- Create my own how-to blog post to help novice HGTV-lovers like myself take on a project they never thought they could do.
My current resources:
- I created a Pinterest board for inspiration and collecting useful links. Personally, I work best when I have a vision (or better yet, multiple visions) for what the finished product might look like.
- The Little Green Notebook provides upholstery charts that estimate how much fabric you need to buy to reupholster different types of chairs.
- I found two blog posts that outline the process of reupholstering a wingback chair like mine. Jessica from Four Generations One Roof interweaves videos and written instructions. Jennifer from Six Seeds offers ample photos and tidbits of wisdom (i.e. lining up patterned fabric is hard).
Now I begin my HGTV novice adventure! If you have any advice or resources you’d like to share, please comment. Otherwise, stay tuned for Part II.
Update: Part II and Part III are ready for viewing!
References
Berger, W. (2016). A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury.
All images on this page taken by Laura Allen.
Laura Allen 