Frustrated Chair Dance

Well, I've been working on the chair, but I gotta tell you, it's not been easy. Turns out that I'm kind of a perfectionist. (Um, duh?) And, I have this notion that I should just innately KNOW how to do things, like, reupholster a chair. Strangely, I'm not omniscient- not in this endeavor and not in my daily life. Kinda knocks you down a peg or two, doesn't it? I'm kidding here- sort of. I mean, I know that I don't know everything, but I do have an expectation that things just aren't as difficult as they appear. This whole chair thing has been a lesson for me in many many ways. I'm not gonna say that I'm glad that my trans-gendered FIL died so I could learn a lesson, because that is way too weird. But out of the whole strange situation, I'm glad that I get to learn something that will further me on my journey. (And don't even get me STARTED on DH's learning out of this...that's a whole different blog!)

Anyway, back to the chair. When we last left the garage, I had the seat fabric cut out and ready to install.

I made the welt with spray adhesive (woo hoo!) and did some sewing to attach said welt to the "skirt" part of the chair.

I then proceeded to attach all the fabric, making a very very nice corner fold, thank-you-very-much, and then attaching welt and skirt with extra stuffing and a cardboard tack strip! Woo! It all looks very very nice. And, I kinda wanted to stop right there- because it looks so nice.

You can't stop with a redone seat and a naked back however. So, I pressed on. Here's the big road bump/block. The back of the chair is curved, rounded, concave. Not flat is what I'm trying to say. And, when you attach fabric to it, you have to make sure that it's not all lumpy or wrinkly. That's HARD. I cut out my back piece- I even cut it bigger anticipating these issues. After that, I let it sit in the garage for a week. To think about what it had done. Being all rounded and difficult. As if that would make it easier. (It didn't) Finally, on this week I came to realize that no one else in the house was gonna magically take up the re-upholstery project and that it was up to me to figure this beast out. That, and we are having guests at the end of the month and right now we are seriously lacking seating in the living room and it would really suck to be all, "hey sorry we don't actually have chairs, they're in the garage, I'm waiting for the upholstery elves- just sit on the floor for now, I'm sure they'll arrive soon..."

I won't bore you with the attaching, removing, reattaching, re-removing, reattaching again... etc. that went on. Or the sitting on the floor and being mad at the back of the chair. Oh, and I forgot the being really frustrated with not understanding how to fit the stapler under the back of the chair to attach the fabric. Suffice it to say, there was bleeding on the floor of the garage and I was ready to just forget it and cut a new even bigger piece and try one more time- when last night- it worked! And, it's not perfect, but it's pretty darn close and I'm very pleased with the result. Yay!

I will now resume photo taking. It just wasn't a good idea during this last bit of the project. Trust me.

Today I will sew another welt, and then attach that to the back of the seat. Once that is in place, the back of the seat needs to be attached. That means more cardboard tack strips and then the use of some super nasty looking metal nail strip thingies. Seriously, these are some of the most fierce looking upholstery supplies I've ever seen. Should be interesting.

I'll let you know how it goes.