Tiny Chair With Woven Seat

This tutorial shows you how to make a tiny and cute traditional looking chair with a woven seat.

Warning this can get a bit fiddly. It's too small and thin to use clamps, but luckily the chair doesn't have to carry a lot of weight so it's still strong enough. However that means it's a lot of pushing things together carefully and hoping it all doesn't slip around too much.

• Crafting matchsticks (can be found at a variety of hobby stores)

• About 60 inches of lace weight string (I used Scheepjes Maxi Sweet Treat in the color Linen)

• Tapestry needle (with a big enough eye to accommodate the string)

• Wood glue

• Craft knife

• Cutting mat

• Ruler

• Pencil

• Sanding paper

• Scissors

You will need 2 long sticks for the back rest, 2 medium ones for the front legs, and 9 short ones for the horizontal bars.

I used the following measurements:

• Long: left the matchsticks full length

• Medium: 1 inch long

• Short: 1/2 inch long

Use the craft knife to cut the match sticks. I found it's easiest to just press down hard on one of the sides, turn 90 degrees and press down again. Repeat if necessary but I found that this was enough to cut through for me.

Sand the ends to get rid of any rough edges.

I drew a guide to help make sure the sides squared up properly. To do this I used a scrap piece of paper and drew two parallel lines 1/2 an inch apart and then drew a few perpendicular lines between them, each spaced 1/2 an inch apart.

To make the sides place a long stick on one side of the vertical parallel lines and a medium one on the other side. Then take one of the short sticks and add some glue to one end and press on to the side of the medium stick making sure they align at top (use the guide to make sure they're at a right angle - the short stick should align with one of the horizontal lines). Add glue to the end of a second short stick and place this one 1/2 an inch under the last one.

Press together tightly.

Add glue to the open ends of the short sticks. Press onto the long stick. Make sure the bottoms of the long stick and the medium stick align.

Repeat this to make a second side.

In this step we'll be glueing 5 short sticks as horizontal bars. To do this lay one of the sides flat and one by one put glue on the end of a short stick and press it down.

Place two at the top of the backrest. I eyeballed this so that the first is about one matchstick's width from the top and the second a matchstick's width under the first.

Place one on each corner of the seat. Place the last stick in the middle of the bottom horizontal.

Do this step immediately after the last step so you can still move the horizontals around if necessary. This does mean you have to be careful, if you push too hard the horizontal bars will slide off of the first side.

Put glue on the ends of all the short sticks and place the second side on top. Use the needle to align them correctly if needed and carefully squeeze the two sides together.

Glue one end of the string to the inside of one of the front corners, making sure that the rest of the string hangs down.

Let the glue dry according to the instructions on your glue. It's very important the glue is completely dry before you go to the next step.

Now you can start wrapping the seat.

Place an extra matchstick on top of the seat as a spacer, this makes the weaving later on a bit easier. Thread your needle onto the thread and use it to wrap the thread around the seat and the spacer. Lay each round neatly next to the last.

Continue until the whole seat is tightly wrapped.

Slide the spacer out.

To start weaving, pass the needle behind the back horizontal bar, from the bottom to the top. Then pass it around the back and start weaving on the bottom of the chair. To weave simply alternate going over and under each thread.

When you get to the end, pass the needle behind the front horizontal bar, from the top to the bottom. Then weave back across the top of the seat. Repeat this till you reach the other side of the seat. This way you'll alternate having a loop around the front and back bars and weaving, this covers the front and back bars better. Use the needle to press rows together tightly as you go.

When you can not weave any more, wrap your thread around the back bar once more. Then pass the needle under all the threads to the front. Add a tiny dab of glue to the front bar of the seat and warp the thread around the front bar one last time. This fixes it in place. Pass the needle under all the threads once more, pull tight and snip the thread close to the seat.

Thats it! You're done! Enjoy your tiny chair!

You can make even smaller chairs by changing the initial sizes of the sticks and following the same steps.