Woven Barbie Chair from Recycled Plastic Milk Carton-Tutorial

Do you remember papasan chairs? They were my inspiration for this Recycled Milk Bottle Barbie Chair with Woven Seat. The seat can be made from yarn or strips of fabric. I decided to weave it since anyone (especially kids) could do that, another option would be to crochet the seat, just keep decreasing until you get to the center. The hardest part is punching holes in the plastic, especially if all you have is a cheap metal paper punch. Kids would get discouraged quickly so I suggest starting them after that point and just let them tie on the yarn and make the seat. This would be another fun sleep-over project if you can gather enough quart milk cartons:@

This is a neat project for crazy bulky yarns (mine is from the AC Moore $1 bin again) but I think doubled up worsted weight would work fine in a pinch. This really is a cute little chair folks, the pics don't do it justice.

 

Woven Barbie Chair from Recycled Plastic Milk Carton

• Measure up the front 2 1/2", draw a line.
• Measure up the back of the chair 4", draw a line.
• Draw a diagonal line from the back to the front on each side.

• Cut out the chair, I used Kuhn Rikon snips but think an Exacto knife would work too. 
• Make holes all around the the plastic, you want the same number of holes on each opposite side. To make it a little easier on my hand I did wear a leather glove while punching the holes. Notes: I'm not the best of planners and just began punching so my holes aren't very evenly spaced. I ended up with 7 holes across the front and back. 9 holes up each side. 

• I decided to knot my yarn to each hole allowing the cut ends to hang down covering some of milk carton. 
• Cut 16 pieces of yarn that are 12" long. (I gave myself some wiggle room, you could make them shorter if you want to save some yarn.) 
• Push the yarn thorough a hole in the front, let it hang down to cover the milk carton and double knot it. Find the matching hole in the back. Now you don't want to pull the yarn tight, we want to create a "sling like" seat... So leave it a little slack.

• Double knot a string of yarn to a top hole on the side and begin weaving it over and under the strings to the other side. Leave it a little slack and tie it off when you get to the other side. If your first string starts out by going over, make the next hole down start out by going under... Continue until the seat is completely woven (think hammock:@) 

Wa-La, a Barbie seat!

At this point you have a functional seat and the rest is up to the budding interior designer... She can leave the yarn hanging long, trim it to about 1", fray it if interested, tie on beads, or maybe even glue it to the milk carton so it looks neater... Anything goes. The long shaggy look kinda reminds me of a chair with an afghan thrown over it, so I left mine like that.

You can click here for my Barbie Pinterest Board.

Have a happy day:@)

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