Demo Day for St Michael’s Hospice – Create, Make, Bake

I have been asked by St Michael’s Hospice to take part in a demo day / mini workshop at The Bell in Ticehurst, on Wed 8th May.

It’s a free event and the day aims to inspire people to up-cycle pre-loved and vintage pieces, through various crafts.  There will be a variety of local artisans there to demonstrate their crafts and give you lots of ideas.

I will be demonstrating the art upholstery throughout the day and would be delighted to talk to anyone interested in what I do, and about the courses I run.

So do come along to Ticehurst between 10am and 3pm.  I look forward to meeting some of you !

Cx

Chaise Longue

Finished chaise

This beautiful chaise had belonged to it’s owners grandmother and had great sentimental value.      When  I stripped it we found it was riddled with wordworm, which was live.  It had got to the stage where it was causing the wood to disintegrate and therefore one of legs had come off.Woodworm can be treated with a special spray, and indeed must be treated, otherwise it will continue and can spread to other pieces of furniture.

I re-webbed the base of the chaise and covered it.  Made a large piped box cushion to go on top, and a bolster cushion.  The end was re-webbed and padded and then covered and trimmed with braid.

It has now been transformed with this smart checked fabric and hopefully been saved from further deterioration.

woodworm

Egg Chair

Before

‘   I must admit this is a project that I was rather reluctant to take on, as I’d heard ‘egg’ chairs are difficult to reupholster.  However a friend of mine had been badgering me for a while to   have  a go at recovering it.   The chairs are made of polystyrene with a small square base being the only place to attach the material to.  The dog had had a good chew on one of the arms, so it needed repairing too.

I patched the arm with a bit of polystyrene from a local craft shop, and had a new foam seat made up.  The most challenging part was getting the concave shape right.  When making the cushion for the back of the chair, I found I needed to make the front of the cushion smaller than the back, to get in to curve nicely.

Anyway I’m pretty pleaseed with the end result.  Another friend had seen the chair in it’s original state and had commented that she didn’t think it was worth saving, however even she admitted it looked great now that it had been updated!

After

Darling Little Deep Buttoned Back Chair

Before

After

I have just reupholstered this lovely little chair.  My client bought it at auction.  The pale green fabric was faded and torn, but the rest of the chair was in good condition.  When I stripped it, I found that the back was stuffed with some kind of straw which fell apart, so I ended up restuffing the back with horsehair.  Previously the chair was finished with a number of different trims – two types or braid plus studs at the front.  This all looked a bit fussy, so we decided to use piping made out of the same red top fabric and then kept the studs at the front of the chair.  I’m really pleased with how the chair turned out, as I must admit, deep buttoning sends me a bit crazy.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist so I’m never happy with the positioning of buttons and end up redoing them far too many times !

Update a Comfortable Armchair

It’s such a shame to get rid of a favourite, comfy armchair, just because it’s looking dated.  Instead it can be given a totally different look with new top fabric. Here are two armchairs I have transformed recently.  The first has been given a new look with grey velvety fabric and piping in the same fabric but in a contrasting electric blue colour.

      Before

 After

The second armchair has been given a new look so that it can have a new use in the nursery as a very comfortable nursing chair.  It has been re-covered in a lovely pale green fabric from Susie Watson Designs.

     Before

 

                               After

Iron Framed Nursing Chair in Fired Earth Fabric

This chair was the final piece I learnt to reupholster at my local Adult Education centre. Having a curved iron frame instead of a wooden frame, made it quite a different kind of project to work on. To begin with, all the iron work had to be wrapped in hessian, this gives you some thing to secure the various layers to later on. It required an awful lot of horsehair for it’s stuffing and really was quite a time consuming project.

The plan had been to get it to it’s calico stage and then put it up for sale on my website, so that the buyer could choose a fabric for it to be upholstered in. However I was impatient and wanted to see the project finished. I set out to find a neutral fabric, so that it would be easy to sell, however I couldn’t bring myself to cover it in something uninspiring, and so opted for this beautiful botanical print from Fired Earth. I was a little worried that it won’t work well with the buttoning on the back of the chair, but in actual fact, the random pattern worked well and I was delighted with the end result.

Half tempted to keep this chair, I was quite disappointed when a buyer came along and loved the fabric I’d covered it in and wanted the chair.

Pairs of Chairs

I think chairs always look good in pairs.  Particularly on either side of a console table.

This pair I recovered recently for someone, and as always I think they look very smart in the striped fabric.

Sets of dining chairs are easily picked up very cheaply from auction or the local paper.  Why not buy a set and them split them up into pairs.