Drop by and see what I'm working on at the moment!
God I hate that term, but I suppose it sums up the fabric I’ve bought to re-do la chaise (well it certainly has a shabby look about it anyway). Had a quick look in the antique shop down the road and they’re selling this wonderful hemp linen sacking (probably French) and got all excited until I saw astronomical price so I turned to my old friend, ebay, and found a kindly bearded and bespectacled Austrian gentleman (well that’s how I pictured him anyway) selling huge rolls of the stuff for about a quarter of the price.
Maybe it’s not vintage, maybe someone’s cottoned onto the fact that this stuff is fashionable now so they’re re-making it … whatever, it looks great and I love it.
I was showing the fabric to a friend and saying how cheap it was, then we realised what a ridiculous world we live in where we’re saying £9 a metre is cheap for old hemp sacking. My how those French farmers must be laughing … actually probably just shrugging and looking disdainful at the stupid English.
So we’ve got everything in place with the lounge now and we’re pretty pleased with the way it’s looking, but something was glaringly ugly and we couldn’t put our finger on it … oh yes, the big ugly black rubber dog’s bed! So we ordered a nice new wicker type basket and Big Mo the black lab seemed pretty happy with that, but I needed to make it more comfortable for her … good excuse for more felt cutting out anyway. I found some old material for the main part of the bed, and used the Loki Cola font for the letter cut-outs.
She seems pretty happy on it, although between you and me I don’t think she can read her own name - not very bright, dogs.
Rediscovered the joys of cutting out bits of felt and hand-sewing them onto stuff (er … maybe ‘joys’ is too strong a word but it’s quite satisfying, let’s just leave it there shall we?) - here’s little fella’s pillow cases. Bit disappointed with them actually - they were meant to look a bit more hand-sewn and naive, but they look more Laura Ashley than anything else (bleurgh).
You’d think I’d have better things to do with my time … wait, I have!
So I’ll start this blog with my current obsession … upholstering my chair.
Prompted by the good Mr W, I had a good look at what I wanted to do with myself earlier this year, post-baby ‘n’all, and I came up with the over-ambitious idea that I wanted to do a textiles degree, maybe go into restoration for museums and stately homes (ahem). Coming back down to earth and realising I needed to keep bringing in the bacon (plus keep some FOCUS in my life), I figured a more realistic aim would be an evening class of some sort.
Upholstery just fulfills a need for me … it somehow fits in quite neatly with my web coding head need for step by step mind numbing detail. Although it can be creative, it’s not wildly artistic and there are a set number of steps you need to go through to achieve an end result. I love working with the frame of the chair, all the effort (by someone else!) that went into carving it, bringing it back to life. The creative part sneaks into the construction - how do you want to shape it? What fabric to use? Do you use buttons? How are you going to finish the wood?
Dark wood furniture is out of fashion at the moment so you can pick things up relatively cheaply - criminal really, considering the amount of thought and work that went into these things in the first place. I picked up a couple of Edwardian chairs at the local auction house for £70 (including commission) and sold the smaller one for £25 to another upholstery newbie. It had some badly tacked-on pink velour covers (see above - nice huh?) over the original, green, incredibly faded chintzy fabric (see left). But it had a faded grandeur and a dignity about it that I loved.
I got all artsy and analytical about it at first, the fact that it was made pre-WW1 at a time when the Empire was fading but there was still a bit of time and money left to put some effort into things, before ideals got blown to bits along with a generation. I loved the carved back, the idea that this was, at the end of the day, a fairly common chair made out of cheap wood (as I found out pulling the tacks out and another splintered shard fell off), but a good deal of craftsmanship had gone into it.
Now I just love it as a good old chair that I’m bringing back to life … I’ll keep posting my progress, it’ll be fun to look back on when it’s finished!
