that's tuft

Last weekend I took another class at The Needle Shop! (remember these 1, 2, 3, 4 ?)

I get their news letters and when I saw that tufting was on the new class list I signed up right away.  Just in case you don't know what I'm talking about, "Tufting" is an upholstery term, it's something you see a lot on headboards, couches and chairs (the buttons that sink down into the fabric and create a 3D diamond pattern).  I've always wanted to learn and it turns out it's much easier that I thought!

Unlike the ottoman class, we didn't make a completed piece of furniture, like a headboard (there are too many variables to do a project that big in a beginners class).  Instead we each upholstered a 2" by 2" piece of wood.

The most complicated part is figuring out your spacing for the buttons, but once you do and you drill the holes in the wood you get to take this awesome foam cutter thing and cut your holes in the foam...

Then we made covered buttons to match our fabric.  It was so much fun!!!!!!!!!!!  I always thought you needed some crazy machine to make buttons, but it's so simple.  You just need two chintzy pieces of plastic (that come in the button pack) and a hammer (or really strong fingers).  It was really satisfying to make all these...

Rachel (owner of The Needle Shop) was so surprised at how excited we got over buttons.  And the excitement didn't stop there.

Even though we were just making a sample piece I still bought some fun fabric. I tried to center the buttons in the flowers, but I think that's a more advanced move, so after the first tuft I gave up on that idea.

It turned out really great, and now I just want to tuft everything in our house.

I'm still not sure what I'll do with my doll's bed sized headboard, but I'll let you know when I come up with a crafty idea!


p.s. Speaking of the newsletter, our tufting class was the first one The Needle Shop had held, so Rachel took some pictures for their facebook page and the site, and guess what showed up on the most recent newsletter...

Hahaha!!! A ridiculous picture of me next to a cozy cat!

lacquer me up!

One of the jobs The Man just finished working on at the shop had to be finished in lacquer.  The shop he works at doesn't normally use lacquer (there are plenty of other finishes that will make a surface beautiful, and lacquer is not the best thing for you).  You might be thinking, "Hey, Lazybones, why do I care?"  Well friend, I'll tell you.  I went to visit the shop, and I saw the table tops all lacquered up, and boy-howdy I'm I excited to paint my chairs now!

I see a lot of people use spray lacquer to refinish their own furniture and it looks great (especially when it's glossy) but oh my word, lacquer sprayed from a spray gun instead of a can is Amazing.  I asked The Man to give me some schoolin' on the high volume low pressure gun (or HVLP Gun for those of us enrolled in The Morning Man University), so he gave me a little lesson.  The great thing about any spray gun is that you aren't limited to what comes in a spray can, you can use any liquid from polyurethane to orange juice.  Which also means that you can use a better quality lacquer then may be available in a can.  Other reasons to use a spray gun is for the economy of it and the control of the spray. There are three tips on the HVLP Gun, one in the middle that shoots out your liquid, and two to the sides that push out air.  All of the tips are adjustable, you can change the air flow and the amount of finish coming out of the gun, as well as the direction and size of the spray.  All these, in addition to being able to change the concentration of the lacquer, are way too many variables for little ol' me, but The Man loves it (so, he'll be the one spraying the chairs).  I also mentioned economy before.  When you use a spray can there is so much pressure pushing out the lacquer, paint, or what-have-you, that a lot of it bounces off your desired surface and is lost, but the finish comes out at a lower pressure in a HVLP gun so more of the liquid stays on your surface.  It's placed as opposed to thrown or as Professor Morning Man put it a spray gun has about a 90% transfer ratio compared to about a 50% with a spray can.  Which means if you use a gun you'll get more out of the same amount of finish than if you use a can.

Here is one of the tables The Man sprayed (sorry for the blurry iphone photo).  Look at the reflection of the vent behind it, ANd This is a satin finish!!!!

I'm pumped about finishing these chairs now, lacquer doesn't yellow, it has a clearer, harder finish and has more depth, it's going to be beautiful!  And it'll be glossy glossy Glossy!


OK, OK, so I got a little wordy this time, I promise, next post will have a lot more pictures!!
Thanks for listening reading!

a little cush for your tush

So, I was trying to wait until I had better photos, and the job was totally done but I'm too excited! I want to share now!  I've been a pretty bad blogger lately, mostly because I had the work week from hell about three weeks in a row, but also because I had been working on an upholstery project that I was keeping from you.

I got a gig upholstering some window seats for a new salon opening here in Chicago. These are iPhone photos taken right after installation but I just can't wait another second to share them with you . . .

I didn't make the pillows, just the seats (for now *wink*wink*), but I'm so happy with them, they're so smooth! Since she didn't want a seam running along the front edge the little nubs took some finessing, but after I MacGyver-ed my way through the first one, they were a cinch!

decision time . . . soon.

Alright so I haven't made much progress since the last time I mentioned the chairs but I have narrowed down my options.  After I picked out all those fabrics The Man and I talked about the chairs themselves, their history and what I'm doing to change them.  He made a good point, keeping the chairs white and only focusing on fabrics I like isn't the way to go.  I don't want people looking at the chairs and thinking, "oh hey, look at the fabric on those chairs," I want people to say, "oh wow, look at those chairs!"

So, no more taking the "easy" way out and sticking with white paint just because I don't want to make any other decisions.  I'm going all in, and here are the options I've picked out:

I've narrowed it down to 3 fabrics, each with 2 paint options

Option 1

Kimono by Premier Prints with
Citrus Zest or
Flaming Yellow

















Option 2

Kilburn in green by Lewis & Sheron Textiles with

Sunkissed Peach or

Youthful Coral

Option 3

Kilburn in navy by Lewis & Sheron Textiles with 

Lipstick or 

Youthful Coral

So, the good and the bad, lay it on me.  What do you think?  Any preferences? Any "oh hellllllll no"s?

I'm going to mull it over for a bit. . . 

 . . . and hopefully a bit won't take me a month, like last time.

the chairs! {cushions and choices}

Last week I got a start on the cushions for the chairs.  I took the fabric off hoping that anything underneath was salvageable. What I found was that this isn't the second life for these chairs . . .

It's the Third!!

Ha! That floral fabric is so familiar, I'm pretty sure we had some cushions made out of it in the early 90's!

I cut off that fabric too and found old (pretty much useless) foam, and really thick particle board that was falling apart.  So into the trash it all went.

The Man and I cut out a new chair base, and decided to call it a day.

So, next up I have to make the final decisions.  Fabric and Paint Color!  I am a terrible decision maker, and its made even worse with the unlimited possibilities available for both.  At first The Man and I were thinking that I should keep it simple.  Limit myself to Black and White so that my brain doesn't implode.  But I keep going back to color, color, color.  One factor that goes into this decision is my "customer."  Am I making these chairs for myself, or for some imaginary buyer.  I would love to sell these chairs once I'm done.  I want to finish them and get them out of the house so I can make room for my next project.  But, who do I design them for? How do I sell them? Do I make them more subdued so anyone will like them?  Or do I just go all out and buyer be damned?  See what I'm talking about . . . kaBooom! (That's the sound of my head exploding).

Either way I go with the fabric (color or no) I think I'm going to keep the paint color of the chairs white.  If I give myself choices of paint color ontop of the fabric choice I don't think these chairs will ever get done.  So I thought I would show you some of the fabric options I'm thinking about, and you can let me know what you think.

If I'm staying with Black and White I was thinking about these:

Media from Premier Prints

Kimono from Premier Prints

Zebra from Trina Turk

Knit from Studio Bon

If I decided to add a little color to the chairs these are some that I was thinking of:

I really love these new fabrics custom designed by Jessica Jones for The Needle Shop:

Picket - Dawn

Sticks - Dusk

Skiff - Dawn

Fawn - Dawn

I also really like all these fabrics off of Schumacher.  The only problem is that I don't have an account with them, and I can't tell what weight some of the fabrics are.

Ric Rack in Pool by Studio Bon

Sally in Midnight by Studio Bon

Beauty Bark in Ocean by Trina Turk

Grass in Olive by Studio Bon

Modern Moire in Citrine by Kelly Wearstler

(It might not look like it from all these examples but I am open to a solid color)

Arches in Orange by Trina Turk

Doppler in Sorbet

Then there is a thrid option. . . Print my own fabric.  On one hand I shouldn't do this, it's taken me so long to get these chairs done and I shouldn't make it more complicated.  But on the other hand, it's taken me so long to get these chairs done so, why not?

Well, what do you think? Do you like any of these prints or do you have something else in mind? Do you know of any good online upholstery fabric shops?

Please!! Help a girl out!

the chairs! {part 1}

This is a project i've been working on for way too long.  Not because it takes so much time to complete but because I keep putting it of to the side.  There's my rant about keeping motivated again.

The morning man found these two chairs in the warehouse of his old shop back in. . . March? (Yeah, it's been a while).  They had been abandon, but weren't in that bad of shape.  So, ok, the arms were falling off and the cusions looked like, well, considering I've had to handle them so much I don't really want to think about what could have been on them.  But it was a start.  I'd just completed my ottoman and it was time for a new project.  Four months later here I am, and once again there hasn't been any sewing.  There has been staple pulling, sanding, bondo-ing, sanding, painting, sanding, wood filling, sanding, oh and did I mention sanding? 

I'm back into it so I thought it's finally time to show y'all what I've done:

This is how I started.  

These are the chairs (sans arms - the man ripped off the ones that were left before he brought the chairs home).  So we unscrewed the seats and went to taking off the backs.

I pried them off and found that the backs were an upholstered piece of wood that had been nailed in with brads, straight through the fabric.  Once I saw that I looked at the fabric and spotted all the little holes the brads made.  I think I'll be upholstering the backs much differently.

Here are the chairs without the seat and back, all thats left is a piece of fabric stapled to the back of the chair.  All I had to do was rip it off and I could get started, or so I thought.  After taking off that piece of fabric I spent weeks taking out staples.  I broke many nails and ruined a screwdriver.  Half of them were lodged into the wood.  I realize now that I didn't have take them all out since I'm painting them, and I had to fill in all the holes with bondo.  But Hey! It's a learning experience.

I sanded the chairs so that all of the clear finish was off, the man let me know that I didn't have to sand all the way through the stain.  I just had to make sure that the paint could adhere to the surface.

After sanding everything down we gave the chairs a coat of primer (Kills to be exact).  Painting the chairs white makes any imperfections stand out, so we could see what had to be filled in.

Next we got out the bondo!!

We filled up the holes from where the arms had been, and decided to make the front of the chairs flush.  You can see in the photos above that the backrest piece was sunken in from the sides of the chairs.  

Then more sanding!!!!!!

...then more bondo-ing

...then more Sanding!!!!

After the multiple go-arounds with bondo and my beautiful Valentine's day present Festool sander.

*side note.  The morning man actually got me a sander for Valentine's day. All of his friends said he must be a horrible boyfriend and that I must have been very upset.  Well, they're all wrong. I Love my Festool DTS400 Sander. It was the perfect present for an aspiring upholsterer.

Ok back to the chairs.  After all the bondo we painted another layer of Kills primer so we could see all the small imperfections.  Once they were all glistening in the afternoon sun I took out the wood filler and filled in any ding, dent, scratch, or nick.  And then guess what was next . . .

SANDING!!!!

And that is where I had gotten to about a month ago.  For the last four weeks they've been sitting in the shop where the morning man works.  I think it's been a bit of out of (my) sight out of mind.  The next step was more paint so the man sprayed them at work with another layer of primer.  I went to visit them a few days ago and I couldn't be happier.  

They are finally ready for some decision making, like colors and fabric choice.  And some actual upholstery.  I'm so excited!!!! 

I am so excited in fact, that I am going to go to bed.

I'll talk to you about fabric and such later!!

getting started {part two}

Back to what I was saying . . .

Third Class:

Mitered Blanket - after taking 101 and piped pillow I had to take one more "intermediate" class before I could take the ottoman class.  I chose mitered blanket thinking, "yeah, awesome who doesn't need an extra blanket" .  .  .

(sorry for the fuzzy pictures)

Then I realized I was making a baby blanket!  It doesn't keep me as warm as I had hoped but it keeps my shoulders cozy.

Forth Class

OTTOMAN!!!!!!! - Finally what I had been waiting for for months!

I had the mister come meet me at The Needle Shop after the blanket class so we could pick out the fabric for the ottoman, and he had picked this owl fabric (from premier prints) before I even got out of class.

yeah, my man's got pretty great taste.

I got the yellow and grey polka dot pattern to make the piping and brought it all in a few weeks later.

In the end, after all that sewing practice, there was barely any sewing involved.  Apart from the seems on the corners it was almost all staples. And I loved every second of it!  Going in with a pile of fabric and some piping and coming out 4 hours later with a fully functional ottoman was awesome.  It was a great feeling of accomplishment, and I can't wait to feel it again!!!