I remember now why I hate sewing...

The last several weeks have been full to overflowing, but I have found minutes here in there to work on one of my upholstery projects. But...I remember now why I HATE sewing.

I learned to sew when I was quite young. I think I pieced a simple quilt top as a baby blanket for my sister who was born when I was eight years old, and then my grandma helped me bind and knot it. My mom believes that everyone needs practical skills and I appreciate that about her despite my childhood protests. I'm really glad she taught me how to sew, but that doesn't make me hate sewing any less. I remember in high school (I went to a podunk Christian high school in the middle of a cornfield--literally!) girls took home ec. and boys took drafting. Being an early convert (1st grade) to the feminist movement, I protested and requested the opportunity to take drafting. I thought I already knew all I needed to know and would ever use about cooking and sewing, and I felt drafting would be a more valuable tool for me.

I was overridden however and suffered through a year or two of sewing hideously ill-fitting dresses and cooking my aunts' recipes out of cookbooks I brought from home. I should note that I have stout, robust, Mennonite-farmwife aunties, and their recipes saved me from being hopelessly inept on all the domestic fronts.

All this to say that I STILL HATE sewing. I like the planning, the purchasing of bold fabrics, the measuring and the cutting. But sewing....alas, if it needs to FIT anything I quickly grow frustrated. I had to resew the seams on the first cushion for the midcentry modern rocking chair at least four times before I got it right. Arghh! Fortunately, the rest of the cushions, and I am at last declaring my first upholstery project finished.

Here's a before picture:






And here's an after picture:

Single-handedly Burning a Hole in the Ozone Layer

So I started into my upholstery project the other night. The Books of the Wise Upholstery Gods say that you should cover your old foam cushions with new upholstery batting--sort of like quilt batting except much scruffier and tougher. To do this you are to liberally spray adhesive in a well-ventilated area. I should preface this by saying that I have had unfortunate experiences with spray adhesive in the past. I should also say that I am too lazy to put on my coat and go out to the garage, so I opened one window in my workspace about 3 inches. That counts as well-ventilated in my book.

Then I set out the materials I would need. I promptly knocked my $14.99 can of spray adhesive off the table and onto the floor. The sprayer part of the aerosal can broke off entirely and it began to sputter spray adhesive about the room. My superior thought process caused me to grab it and try to rescue the spray by directing it toward the foam and batting that needed to be sprayed anyway. I forgot that a.) spray adhesive is nasty, noxious, sticky stuff and b.) aerosol cans become extremely cold when they are about to explode. My fingers started to freeze around the top of the canister as I frantically aimed the spittle of the adhesive at its intended target. I had a rag sitting on the desk. (Ok, so it WAS a perfectly good washcloth but NOW it's a rag). I grabbed the rag with my other hand and covered the spray spout whenever I needed the spray to stop long enough for me to move one cushion out of the way and replace it with the new victim.

The results: Hand frozen and going into toxic shock. Spray everywhere. Little fibers of upholstery foam and batting combined with nasty adhesive all over my hands. Can of expensive adhesive emptying itself into a plastic bag in the back yard. Frustration. New hole in ozone layer directly over our house.

Detour

I've decided to take a detour from the truly hideous chairs. We bought this midcentury modern rocker off of Craigslist the other day. Its upholstery is in pretty bad shape, plus it is a much simpler project. So last weekend, between copious bouts of sleeping to get rid of my cold/flu, I bought this great fabric to recover it. Stacey helped pick it out at the Whole 9 Yards. It didn't photograph very well but it is a deep brick red color with orange-red circles and green/gold dots on it. I love it. I spread it out on the living room floor (good thing I have a bowling alley of a living room!) and cut out all the pieces. Tonight I cleaned off one of the tables in our office/studio (translate: shoved all the junk from one table on to another table). I'm going to try my hand at making some piping. I'll blog about it if I survive.

The Truely Hideous Chairs #2

The first steps were to remove the wooden rails around the bottom of the chair and then take off the back fabric. Looks like I'll have to replace some of the helical(?) springs that are supposed to hook all the zigzag springs together on the bottom of the chair.

The Truely Hideous Chairs #1

About two weeks ago I found these Truely Hideous Chairs (or THCs) on Craigslist for $50. I liked the shape of them and decided they were cheap enough to be upholstery experiments. I'm going to document my tearing apart and putting back together attempt here on Beesnest. I hope that if I take enough pictures of tearing them apart, I'll remember how to put them back together. Just to be on the safe side, I'm leaving the chair that was in slightly better shape intact so that I can use it as a model. To be on the safe side, I also checked out a couple of books on upholstery from the library--I can't say that I've really read them, but I looked at the pictures and it doesn't look too hard :) Here's how they looked to start with.