Rescued Stool with Knitted Upholstery

We loved the skips of England, low-slung dumpsters parked temporarily in front of houses where people were cleaning out or remodeling. We would stroll by, glancing nonchalantly into the skips, looking for interesting furniture or other treasures that were, for the moment, someone else’s trash.

Charles brought home this oaken stool from a skip one day. It needed refinishing and a new top. He stripped and refinished the wood. I provided the upholstery.

The knitting was left over from a piece I made on my Ultimate Sweater Machine. After fusing interfacing to the underside, I machine stitched a grid at about one-inch intervals across the stabilized fabric. Following instructions from a library book, we reupholstered the stool.

That was in the late 1990s, and we’ve been using it ever since!