Category Archives: upholstery

What happened to November?

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Well, I got really, really, really busy with several projects: knitting, sewing, refinishing and reupholstering a desk chair, sewing, knitting, sewing, knitting, and getting ready for a new addition to our home.

I finished (finally) the November socks for my daughter. These socks seemed to take forever. I put them on hold while I was helping my sister recover from surgery, then one of her precious greyhounds got involved, our two closest grandkids moved to Michigan, my birthday happened, and the list could go on and on. Here are the socks in all their glory.

November Socks
November Socks legs
Closeup of leg and truest color shot

I love the colors and it’s really hard to capture how pretty they really are. The honeycomb pattern was fairly easy but I did have to concentrate on those rows.

My sister gave me some fabric with a plate and silverware design so I made six placemats for my daughter.

These two chairs have been sitting in my basement since I rescued them from iPad aunt’s garage in 2015. I stripped one chair, refinished it, and put on new upholstery suede fabric. I took lots of pictures during the process but I’ll just show you the before and after. If you really want to see all the work-in-progress pictures, let me know and I’ll try to make some sense of them for you. Personally the before and after pictures should be enough. I plan to redo the other chair but that will have to wait till next spring as I have to do some of the work outside.

Before…..
After…..

This quick sewing project took about an hour or two. I made mesh laundry bags to send with all of the socks I made with the hand-dyed yarn we dyed in June.

The Karate Kid’s socks were next on the project list and I finished them in record time (for me at least). I used this Syncopation Sock pattern that I’ve used before. The pattern is written for toe-up socks but I made these from the top down. I love the colors and wish I could keep them for myself! They deserve a post of their own so I’ll just show the finished project for now.

All of the socks I knit for my three grands and my daughter along with the mesh bags and placemats will be boxed up and sent to Colorado ASAP.

Another quick and easy sewing project was this leash. The fabric is a heavy brushed cotton that looks like a patchwork quilt. I had everything in my sewing stash so, in less than 30 minutes, it was done.

I just started this sweater (I’m just using one color) the other day and have a deadline of December 16 to get it off the needles…

…because we are getting ready for a new addition to our family.

A female miniature schnauzer puppy! No pictures of her right now but I will soon. Very soon! For the next several days puppy-proofing the house will be our #1 priority!

The ottoman

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I finally finished the reupholstery projects I began last year.  I reupholstered two wingback chairs, one from my mother’s house and one from iPad aunt’s house.

My mother’s chair had a matching ottoman.

I didn’t like the way the top cushion was attached to the base as it was not secure and would wobble no matter how I many times I tried to straighten it.  

Plus it was too fiddly to try to recreate.

To give it the look of two cushions, I cut the side pieces a little bit longer than necessary and sewed a piece of cording about half way down.  Simple.

No progress pictures, just the final.

To-do list progress

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Or maybe I should call this post my procrastination list.  The things I did because I didn’t want to do the things I needed to do.

To-Do List:

  1. Recover ottoman
  2. Clean basement
  3. Paint basement walls
  4. Reattach insulation to floor joists/ceiling in the basement
  5. Clean out walk-in closet
  6. Finish Bacardi Cardi
  7. Sew seams in Sunny Day top

Did-Instead List:

  1. Knit 2 Kindness Shawls (one, two)
  2. Knit Ka’ana Shawlette
  3. Knit top-down cardigan
  4. Sew travel bag for GPS
  5. Knit four face/washcloths
  6. Knit the Accidental Shawl
  7. Recover ottoman – Yes!  I can check this off the above list!!!
  8. Repaint outside door from the garage
  9. Repaint front door and trim

Ok – so I actually did one thing from the To-Do list.  I finally finished recovering the ottoman that went with one of the chairs that I reupholstered last summer.  The only reason that I didn’t do it last year was that it is just too cold in the basement during the winter months to do that kind of work. More on this project another day.

The face/washcloths were a gift along with some handmade soaps from West Virginia to my daughter-in-law that we met for the first time while on our vacation.  I forgot to take pictures of the ones I gave to her but they were similar to these. Picot Swirl Cloth in the small size.  

Repainting the outside doors were always in the back of my mind so when I saw that the paint was on sale for 40% off, I had to jump at that and buy some.  More on this project another day, too.

So do you follow your To-Do List or do you find something else to do because you don’t want/need to do them?

Chairs

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Both chairs are finished.  The colors aren’t that true and I can’t seem to get the right adjustments to make them more realistic.  The yellowish-green is more of a chartreuse green and the blues have more depth.

Rita’s chair: Done!  This is now my knitting chair as it sits in the corner.

And here it is in front of the window.  iPad Aunt’s chair resides there now.

iPad Aunt’s chair: Done but not happy with the cushion.  I didn’t wrap the new foam in Dacron before stuffing it into the cover.  It looks too boxy and I need to fix that.  Plus the seat cushion looks too big for the chair but it’s not that way in real life.

Both chairs side-by-side.  You can see that they are very similar but different.  Rita’s chair has a lower part on the bottom front, straight-arm stump, and is a smaller chair.  iPad Aunt’s chair is straight across the bottom front, has a curved arm stump, and is a wider chair.

I tried very hard to get the patterns to match up on both chairs but it was very difficult.  The pattern was 24 inch vertical repeat so I tried not to waste fabric.

I am in the process of redoing the ottoman that matches Rita’s chair but that is on hold for now.  Too many irons in the fire.