See How This Colorful Woven Chair Was Made

Design students Elaina Runge (who studies textiles) and Ana Mosseri (who studies furniture design), worked together to create an over-sized chair named the ‘Looped Pile Seat’ for a school project.

Let’s take a look at how they made the chair…
First they made the frame. A series of bent wood pieces was joined together to create the frame structure. The wood was then stained a dark color, which you’ll see in later photos. Then came the hand dyeing of 34 yards of fabric in 12 different shades (they only ended up using 10 shades, and discarded the last two orange ones).

Once the fabric was dyed and dried, it was then sewn into a long, soft, noodle-like form, with upholstery foam on the inside. Here you can see the material ready for weaving. They took the dark stained wood frame and placed a piece of vinyl on it. That vinyl was punched with a grid of holes, to help guide the weaving.

The fabric tube is pushed through each hole to form a loop, while on the back it wraps around the bent laminated plywood, much like the spokes of a basket would be bound. The end result is a super soft, squishy, brightly colored chair.