Your browser does not support HTML5 video. Reading strange-sounding Swedish words is part of the joy of shopping at IKEA. Within the labyrinth of stylish flat pack furniture is a pänoply of ödd, åccented pröduct nämes, printed on hang tags, walls and banners. What most shoppers don’t know is that the names of those 12,000 products conform to a strict internal logic that offers a peek into Scandinavian culture. At a Jan. 25 product showcase in New York City, IKEA designer Jon Karlsson explained that IKEA has a crack team of product namers, who assign names from a database of Swedish words. Bookcases are named after professional occupations (Expedit means shop keeper) or boys’ names (The bestselling Billy bookcase is named after IKEA employee Billy Likjedhal). Outdoor furniture is named after Scandinavian islands (Äpplarö an island in the Stockholm archipelago and Västerön is in Aaland). Rugs are named after cities and towns in Denmark or Sweden (Ådum, Stockholm, Silkeborg), while bed sheets, comforters and pillowcases are named after flowers and plants.

(Häxört or circaea lutetian is an herb in the primrose family). The rules for naming were devised by IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad, who struggled with dyslexia and had trouble remembering the order of numbers in item codes. The name IKEA itself is acronym for Ingvar, Kamprad, Elmtaryd (his family’s farm) and Agunnaryd (the village in Småland where he grew up in). To simplify inventory for its 389 stores around the world, the Swedish home furnishing chain uses the same name for its products in all its markets. The database is culled for words that may have offensive meanings in other languages—though sometimes things fall off the radar. In the annals of unfortunate IKEA product names: 2004’s Fartfull children’s workbench, Fartyg ceiling light, and the dotty Stenklöver duvet set. Karlsson says designers sometimes get to propose creative names for their creations, but typically the naming committee sticks to a well-defined scheme.Some products are given names that evoke their function.

For instance, IKEA’s newly-launched bicycle is called “Sladda” which translates to “skid” in Swedish. In the kitchen section, there’s a spice mill called Krossa, which means to crush or grind. “Sladda” = skid If you remember this key, you may learn a thing or two from the immense flat-pack Swedish dictionary that is IKEA: Bathroom articles = Names of Swedish lakes and bodies of water Bed textiles = Flowers and plants Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture = Norwegian place names Bookcases = Professions, Scandinavian boy’s names Bowls, vases, candle and candle holders = Swedish place names, adjectives, spices, herbs, fruits and berries Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks = Swedish slang expressions, Swedish place names Children’s products = Mammals, birds, adjectives Desks, chairs and swivel chairs = Scandinavian boy’s names Fabrics, curtains = Scandinavian girl’s names Garden furniture = Scandinavian islands

Kitchen accessories = Fish, mushrooms and adjectivestable and chair rentals troy mi Lighting = Units of measurement, seasons, months, days, shipping and nautical terms, Swedish place namesnilkamal plastic chair price in india Rugs = Danish place namesnursery glider chair nz Sofas, armchairs, chairs and dining tables = Swedish place namesarne jacobsen chair ebay If you’re curious about what words actually mean, Sweden’s Rubix Cube champion Lars Petrus compiled a helpful, if incomplete Swedish-to-English dictionary of IKEA product names. porch rocking chairs houston

Sometimes, IKEA goes the extra mile to translate its names too. white rattan chair argosLast month, it delighted fans with Retail Therapy, a clever advertising campaign that matched IKEA product names with the most Googled searches in Sweden. A matte silver corkscrew called Idealisk (“ideal” in Swedish) became “Why Men Can’t Open Up“.Are you looking to make new cushions for an outdoor lounge chair or Adirondack chair? Hinged cushions work well for this and a variety of other applications. These long cushions serve as both the seat and the back for the chair and are popular in both indoor and outdoor furniture. While they might look tricky to make yourself, if you break the steps down, they are really pretty easy! We have a great step-by-step video that will guide you through the process. To demonstrate how to make a hinged cover, we’re going to make a new cushion for an Ikea Poäng chair.

Reupholstering the cushions is a great way to make a standard Ikea chair look more unique and styled for your home. For this project, we’ve chosen a Sunbrella Upholstery Fabric, Violetta Baltic. If you are making a cushion for an outdoor chair, be sure to choose an outdoor fabric and to use polyester thread, as those materials will better stand up to the weather. The methods used in this video will work for any style of hinged chair cushion. In this video you will learn how to pattern and sew a hinged cushion, how to add an optional pillow and we’ll also demonstrate how to insert the foam using silk film. Have you ever made a hinged cushion? What did you learn in the process?Here’s the warning: This is a wordy and picture heavy post. I attempted to create a full tutorial with this but to be honest this was a very time consuming (30-35 hours of work) and trial and error type of process. I also attempted to keep this post as short as possible so if something’s confusing please ask and I will try to explain.

If you are interested in making your own the very bottom of the post is where all the dimensions I used are. Please use those at your own risk and double check everything before you jump in. If you’re just here for the pictures feel free to scroll quickly towards the bottom. Other than that enjoy 🙂 A while back I found How Joyful’s nursery Ikea Poang chair recover and fell in love. Although there aren’t detailed instructions I used this as my inspiration. Between the photos in the post and some help from my very smart mom I was able to come up with something pretty similar to this. I loved that the cover was custom and looked so much more comfortable than the ones that you can purchase from Ikea. When I started looking for chairs for our nursery I had such a hard time finding one that didn’t seem huge, expensive or like it only belonged in a nursery. Since our nursery is pretty small I really wanted a simple chair with a small footprint. I finally decided to go for it and I bought just the Ikea Poang frame in brown black.

After a lot of hours of work and probably just as many hours trying to figure out dimensions and  how to sew it all I’m finally down with my very own cushions. Although it may look like it I actually didn’t use the same fabric as the other chair above. I purchased mine from the home decor bolts at Joann’s. I didn’t intentionally choose a chevron print (even though I obviously like them). I chose what was as much of a grey-brown as possible so that it wouldn’t clash with the wall paint. This was pretty much my only/best option and I’m pretty happy with it. Now on to the how I did it. 3″ Foam (~1.5 yards) 1″ Foam (just for head rest ~8″) White Fabric or Muslin (3.5 yards) Home Decor Fabric (4.5 yards of 45″ wide)* 4 – 22″ Zippers I purchased pretty much everything from Joann’s if you’re curious. I started out by cutting the 3″ thick foam to size for the seat. I put that in place and then started measuring what I wanted for the rest of the cushion pieces.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any better tools so I used a serrated kitchen knife to cut the foam to size. It made the cuts pretty rough but it’s not noticeable in the finished cushions. I worked piece by piece from the bottom up measuring and re-measuring what I wanted the next cushion to be before cutting it. Even with all the measuring I still managed to make the back cushion higher than I was intending. It extends well above the back of the seat. This actually worked out ok since my husband is tall and wanted the back taller anyway so I just went with it. After testing out the chair with the foam I thought the top piece (or headrest) was lacking. I ended up buying another piece of 1″ foam to lay on top of the 3″ foam. So the final total thickness of the head rest is 4″. It made a huge difference in the comfort of the chair I definitely suggest it. Once all the foam was cut I started cutting out and assembling a lining for the cushions. I wanted each cushion to be covered in batting to smooth them out as well as encased in a lining so the final fabric can easily be removed and laundered when needed. I

cut out a white muslin as the outer fabric and two layers of batting the same size as each piece. To keep the batting from moving around I sewed it onto each piece of the muslin lining before assembling them into the covers. I started by sewing four rectangles end to end to create the gusset. Then I put it around the foam to double check the sizing. Once I was happy, I sewed on one square for the bottom and then sewed on another square halfway for the top. I tried sewing more than this to begin with but the foam was impossible to stuff into the cover if it was more than halfway sewn shut with the machine. Then I just pinned the opening closed and hand sewed the open edges with a whip stitch. It’s not the most decorative stitch but since it’s not visible in the end I just did what was sturdy and simple. Once all the lining covers were complete I put all the cushions back into the frame to see how they all looked together. The don’t fit against the frame extremely well but I was hoping that once the final cover connected them all together that they would fit much better.

With the lining covers completed I moved onto the final covers. I cut the fabric the same sizes that I did with the lining and they worked out well. I knew that serging the pieces together would be really difficult so I just serged around all the raw edges to keep them from fraying. For the bottom cushion I made two flaps to hold the seat cushion back against the frame. For all the cushions I sewed a centered zipper into the piece that is the back or bottom of the cushion so that the covers could be easily removable and washable. Then just like with the lining I sewed the edges or gussets into a circle and then sewed on the top and bottom squares of the cushion. For the bottom cushion I sewed the flaps into the seams on either side of the zippered edge while sewing the gussets together. For the back cushions I sewed small flaps into the seams so that I could connect the back cushions to each other and then to flap that would go over the back of the chair frame.

Here is the back of the middle cushion with all the flaps sewn on. The bottom back cushion only had a flap on the top back seam. Here’s all of the cushions stacked up with the flaps all sewn on. You may notice that there is a second set of flaps on the bottom of the chair. I originally thought I needed to strap the bottom of the back cushion down but once it was all together I removed these flaps since they seemed unnecessary. With all the cushions stacked up I remeasured them to determine how long and wide I needed the flap that would go across the back of the chair and hold all the cushions together and on the chair. Once I liked how everything was set up I removed the foam from the covers and sewed the flaps between the cushions together. The seam between the bottom and middle is sewn so the raw edges are in between the cushions since it wasn’t totally hidden by the back flap. The seam between the top and middle cushion are facing out since they are covered by the back flap.

I used the rest of the flaps to sew on the main back flap. Since the chair frame has some thickness my back flap ended up being larger than the cushion flaps. I ended up making a pleat in the center of the top and a small tuck on each of the sides just above the hem of the back flap. I think the extra tucks/pleats helped to give the little bit of extra fabric needed to make the back flap fit perfectly around the frame. I also tried my hardest to sew as close to the cushion so that none of the small flap would be visible in the final cushions. You can see the top pleat in this photo. It’s actually pretty difficult to see any of the extra fabric from the flaps once it was all together. Here’s the bottom flaps after I sewed on some snaps to hold them on. And just because I’m proud of how it turned out here’s a few more pictures. In case you are wondering; yes it is really comfortable. I think I have sighed every time I sat down. If you’ve made it this far congratulations that was seriously a ton of photos and words. I

thought I would also throw in all the dimensions that I ended up using. I would trust these at your own risk. It’s probably best to work with measuring and remeasuring like I did testing each piece out along the way. Seat: 21.5″ wide x 21″ deep Lower Back: 13″ high x 21.5″ wide Middle Back: 7.75″ high x 21.5″ wide Top Back: 7″ high x 21.5″ wide (1 from 3″ foam and 1 from 1″ foam) Seam allowance used is .5″, I added 1.5″ on each side for seam allowances and extra. 2@ 22.5 x 23 2@ 22.5 x 4.5 2@ 23 x 4.5 2@ 14.5 x 4.5 2@ 14.5 x 23 2@ 23 x 9.25 2@ 9.25 x 4.5 Top Back (Foam is extra 1″ thick): 2@ 23 x 8.5 2@ 23 x 5.5 2@ 8.5 x 5.5 1@ 23 x 4.5 2@ 2.75 x 23 4@ 2.5 x 7.5 1@ 1.25 x 22.5 2@ 1.25 x 22.5 2@ 8.75 x 1.25 1@ 23 x 5.5 2@ 3.25 x 23 2@ 8 x 1.25 1@ 18.75 x 24.5 (with 1″ hem and .75″ seam allowance which is how much the flaps hung out)