Finally, again…

Apparently it’s against the universe’s rules to focus on one thing at a time.  Instead of being able to just roll onward and an upward with studio organisation, I’ve also had to do other things, some of which involved working in the studio.

For instance, some pesky chairs.  I have three patio chairs that are several years old.  They’re pretty comfortable, and structurally sound, but the fabric is shot:

The old chair...

detail of wear

Now these chairs aren’t worth spending much time or money on, but I thought I could do a down-and-dirty easy-on-easy-off slipcover that would extend their lives another couple of years and encourage people to sit in them without thinking, “hmmm, grungy….”

I found the perfect fabric — for $140 per yard.  Um, No.  I found some acceptable fabric that worked out to $20 per chair.

So after an afternoon of sewing we have “new” chairs.

Just a quickie...

 

First Rant About Pedestal Sinks

Nowhere to put anything.

The upstairs bathroom in Pergola House is mostly a guest bathroom.  It’s roomy, and light.  The shower curtain is made from very cool fabric picked out by the Younger a few years ago in the old house.  But.  The former owners had some kind of love-affair going with pedestal sinks.  So the bathroom has a damn pedestal sink with hardly any parking space for soap, or toothbrush, and only a small medicine cabinet above it, which is the only closed storage in the whole bathroom.  A proper vanity and sink are not in the budget right now; neither is a cabinet next to the shower/tub.

Two shelves and a surface!

I remembered that I had a two-drawer sofa, or hall type table that I had painted years ago.  It spent the past few years in the garage, used once in a blue moon for a portable table for sewing demonstrations.  It dawned on me that, remarkably, it complemented the shower curtain perfectly  — exactly the right colours, larger scale pattern than curtain, geometric rather than crazy monkey figurative pattern.  And it fit the space as though made for it.

So I slapped a couple of coats of polyurethane on it, while the poly was out last week, and here we are!

Close-up.

Upstairs bathroom decor... hard to take good pix in small quarters.

And both the curtain fabric and the table tie in with the botanical prints, actually covers from The Garden Book Club catalogues in the late ’80s and early ’90s, that I had framed for a bathroom three houses ago.

Of course this story is not something the “throw it out if you haven’t used it in a year” people will like because of the main useful and decorative elements here (including the shower curtain bar!),  the only thing that hadn’t been out of circulation for several years is the curtain!

Wait til I make the new bath mat!

 

Kitchen Project — How I Did It

The foundation of the project is a steel shelving unit, by Seville Classics courtesy of Costco, which I had been pressed into use as a stop-gap measure: http://ietextiles0manninghamilton.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/polyeurathane-refugee-and-kitchen-project/ .  Ours is the 48″ version of this:

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?ec=BC-EC22708-ProdID11245665&pos=0&whse=BC&topnav=&prodid=11110255&lang=en-US

The space between the fridge and the spice cabinet is just shy of 80 inches, the standard length for doors.  So I had Von Tobel’s Lumber trim 1″ off the one end of each of three 24″ wide  birch face hollow-core flush doors, and rip a fourth one down the middle to provide two lengths of twelve inch wide shelving.  Once all the damn Poly was on I carefully measured and marked the location of the holes to correspond with the posts of the steel shelves and drilled.  As I mentioned, even without the police action interlude, it’s a bit nerve-wracking — three sets of four holes have to line up almost perfectly and slip over the posts…

And they did!

Each “door” shelf actually rests on a steel shelf, distributing the load over 6 square feet, rather balancing it on four points.

You can see how the load is carried by the steel shelf

I had given some thought about both the appearance and the durability of the join between the “door” shelves and the steel posts and spent some time looking for a grommet type thingummy that would protect the edges of the hole as well as cover up the raw edge and keep out debris.  Well — no such item in the right size seems to exist.  So I perused various bins in the hardware aisle and finally came up with a combination of pipe nipple and lock-nut.

The pipe nipple slips over the post, nesting between the post and the drilled edges in the door, and sticks up just enough to screw on the lock-nut.

In order to spare you five thousand words, here are pictures: (since I still don’t trust WordPress to put the pictures up in order, visually, I am numbering them)

1. steel shelving pipe sticking up through drilled hole

2. pipe nipple dropped over steel post

3. Pipe nipple pushed down between steel post and hole

4.finally, lock-nut screwed down over edge of hole

Careful thought and measuring of worktop height and cookware was vital.  The height of the bottom shelf conflicted with  the location of a crucial electrical outlet, so I cut a notch out of the back of that shelf.

I know, it’s like baby pictures.  They all look the same except to the proud parent.

The light is a halogen work light, one of three I bought several years ago.  There isn’t any electrical box over in that area so a hardwired fixture would have been a pain and expense, and this light is a plug-in.  If I get feeling really swanky, I may spray paint the housing in copper or hammered steel…

 

Look What the Cat Dragged In… (slipcoverage)

Okay, last night I figured out the fabric for the seat cushions — measured, plotted, even figured out a way to do faux welting.  I sat down to start sewing.  The first step is to make the openings in the back where you put the cushion in and out.  This can be fastened with a zipper, snaps, buttons, velcro.  I think velcro is second only to duck tape in the how-many-things-can-you-use-for sweepstakes, so I’m using velcro.

I had four yards of velcro that I’d taken out of the Joann’s bag. The cat seemed pretty fascinated, and I figured he couldn’t really hurt it, so I left it on the floor for him to investigate.  I went out to the living room to measure the lengths I needed to cut, got sidetracked by a couple of phone calls, finally measured, and went back into the sewing room.

Where’s the velcro???????  I thought I left it on the floor….  I look high, I look low.  I look in the living room in case I inadvertently left it there.  I look some more.  I look in the *bathroom* in case I left it *there*.  It really seemed to be nowhere to be found.  So I buttoned up for the night.

Today — I start looking again, thinking I’ll be really peevilated if I have to go buy more velcro because I can’t find what I already bought.

Ahem.  Velcro was found under dining room table.  Ahem.  I believe the cat is the one who dragged it in there.  Soooo….  Now I will get to work.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Guilty??

Or Innocent?

 

Slipcoverage — and breaking rules

I started with some left-over stiff upholstery fabric with the weird, rubbery, and really, not terribly pleasant, olefin-y backside for the deck of the sofa because that anchors the whole slipcover and putting the rubbery side down minimises the slippage of the slipcover.  And it’s hidden, so who cares what it *looks* like.

The decking and the first "fitting..."

Making the “sleeves” is the irksome bit, and thank goodness some of the flab (I told you I was committing plastic surgery) can be tucked into the crevices.

After much crawling back and forth, pinning and unpinning,  going back and forth between the sewing room and fitting room (aka living room, home of said sofa) I got to this point:

The basic slipcover!

I’ve mentioned before about breaking rules.  Well……  Here I’m breaking slipcover fabric rules. The “fashion” fabric is a faux suede cloth that’s actually meant for garment making.  But the colour is perfect.  And I was seduced.  I may wind up putting a lining layer under strategic sections.  I went out today to buy Velcro for  the seat cushions, and hope to start on them tomorrow after I get back after a couple of workshops in the first part of the day.  I have a plan that includes a complementary fabric…

 

Back to the Sofa (Back)

I have now finished the plastic surgery, i.e. “re-upholstery” part of the sofa project, and it’s time to start the “slipcovering” part.

The new, smooth, tight-back of the sofa (with the cat...)

The back, from the back, showing my down&dirty stapling job

 

Refurbishing Sofa — Including Plastic Surgery…

We have a sofa of uncertain provenance, that has been around long enough to ummm….  be in need of resuscitation.  I’m working on that this week and will keep you posted.  It needs more than just a slipcover.

That which needs refurbishment

It has a button-tufted attached-pillow back and three seat cushions.  Yesterday I carefully slit the seam between the pillow part of the  back and the frame, and cut off all the buttons.

The sofa eviscerated