April's Musings

Tuesday, September 06, 2005
"Chairs—let’s play dress up!"

How to decorate your kitchen or dining room chairs. Now here is a festive tip that is so easy and so pretty. Do you have pretty placemats? Or beautiful runners? I have a cupboard-full and here is an idea that gets your artful table linens out of the drawer and helps enliven and freshen a room. With favorite, old, or new placemats and a roll of two-sided tape, you can transform a room in minutes.

Choose linens that reflect the mood you are looking to achieve. Something bright for a children's party, black or brocade for an elegant evening, or a lace runner for an afternoon tea. With your two-sided tape, attach the placemat or runner to the back of the chair. That's it! You now have a beautiful chair-back!

• Four chairs each with different bright prints, for a fun and festive look. Mix all the primaries together—blue, yellow, and red—for a "happy look."
• Four chairs with four different laces, giving the feeling of a treasure of collected laces. I personally like to mix old laces and new laces together.
• Four sophisticated brocades. This is beautiful for the holidays, New Year's Eve, or an elegant dinner party.
• Runners. A runner doesn't even need the tape; it can fold over the front and back of the chair.
• For a western look, use a plaid placemat as your chair back and create the ties with leather laces. You can create a lariat effect on the back of the chair with leather laces and a piece of jewelry tied to the back.
• If you want, you can put a "chair-back" on the front and back of the chair—a coming and going effect. In fashion, we call that the "walk-away" effect.
• Another way to have a double-sided chair back is to use a 16" (this is a standard size) cushion cover and just pop it over the back of the chair. You can complete the look with a coordinating or contrasting cushion on the chair seat.

• You can add gold ribbons as streamers on the corners.
• You can add multicolored scraps of cloth torn into three inch wide by three feet long pieces and tie them on the chair posts. Bow them, let them trail, or do a combination of both, creating your own look. Each chair can have a slightly different tie or slightly different combination of fabrics.
• Use crochet trims and laces with satin ribbons for your vintage chairs.

• Now is the time for fun and personalization. You can completely match your table linens to your chair linens or you can coordinate them in a fun way.
• If you have print on the chairs, try a coordinating plaid for your tablecloth—a plaid which picks up the colors of the prints. Top the tablecloth with the same, or nearly the same, printed mats as your chair-backs.
• The napkins could be a solid that pulls both color stories together. I call these solid napkins "my essentials." They help augment sets of incomplete prints, add a dash of color, and can also add reprieve to too much print. The napkins can also be plaid or printed, or a joyful mixture of all three—essential solids, plaids, and prints.
• Alternately, you may have used up all your table linens (in which case hop over to the shops!) on the chair-backs. Now may be the time for understating the table and letting the glow of the table's surface dominate. If you have a nice wooden table this is a must from time-to-time. Add a runner in the table center, a pair of candle sticks, and a medium sized bowl of fat flowers (cut the stems short and float them in water). Roses, Peonies, Chrysanthemums, any large bloomed flower, tightly packed in a low bowl—brass, glass, ceramic, something you love—will make a beautiful pool of color on a plain table, and will also re-enforce the colors on your chairs.
• Stand back, take a look. Good, isn't it? Make your adjustments and appreciate!