Monday, August 13, 2012

First day of re-upholstery class

Ooo I had such a fun day on Saturday!  I have wanted to learn re-upholstering for the longest time but it's always so difficult to get into classes.  Some time in April I finally managed to find one though and booked in for the soonest available class (in August).  Then the day before the class I realised in a panic that I didn't actually have a piece of furniture to work on!  I spent the day hunting around second hand stores looking for something suitably shabby.  Sadly I had no luck.  Then late that evening in a last ditch attempt I fought my way through the cobwebs in my mothers attic and came across the perfect chair!  It needed a good sanding, an arm reattaching and obviously the upholstery reworked.  When I brought it to class the next day and began the two hour task of pulling out each individual, rusty pin I was surprised to find that it had been stuffed with straw.  Before long my workbench was in a slightly embarrassing state.  Straw, cobwebs, mouse poo and disintegrating fabric covered everything!
The most important thing I learned from this class was definitely that even the old materials need to be removed with care, as they become the template for the new fabrics.  You also want to be careful to remember the order in which everything is layered (and trust me, there are a lot of layers).
Before the next class I need to get on with sanding the chair, fixing the broken arm and finding the perfect fabric to recover it in. Luckily I already have the next project lined up.  But I'll share that one in due time.
x

6 comments:

  1. Good on you. That's something I've always wanted to do. I do happen to have an especially talented upholsterer just down the road though, so he's getting all my work at the moment. Look forward to seeing the finished chair. x

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's so cool! I wanna take a class like this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. An upholstery class for you to make use of your free time a useful one and make you some wonderful upholstery.

    Upholstery

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey where did you find the class??

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, I found it through the community college website... you can see their future classes here http://www.xtend.co.nz/search/index.php?fcourseid=23970&section=c
    It was a fantastic class, I definitely recommend it.

    ReplyDelete