Rockin' Chair: Part 2

It is at this point in the process that I am ashamed to admit the rocking chair will require three separate blog entries.  That's half of my posts thus far!

I cleaned up a bit for you guys. I didn't want 18 mid-progress Christmas ornaments to distract you. Plus, spoilers. I started by measuring the base of the seat.  This is where my handy-dandy cutting mat really..uh...comes in handy.  My sewing soulmate (Aunt K) gave it to me for my birthday two years ago and it is used non-stop! I added four inches all around and made my cuts to the turquoise colored corduroy.  I knooow I just got RID of the cord, but I couldn't think of anything else that would wear so well!  And all my utility weight fabric would show ALL the dirt. We got the cord today at JoAnn. Speaking of...

This is NOT the way to cut fabric for a customer. Holy heck. If I had the time, I'd have a Tumblr dedicated to bad JoAnn cuts. The worst ever was when I got such a severe parallelogram that I didn't have enough yardage for my project. Clarice never would have stood for this nonsense! (Clarice worked at the old JoAnn location on Gravois. The charming one with all the leaks in the roof. You know the one. Infinitely better than Super Joann locations.) (Also, I just had to go back and switch all the "Joann's" to "JoAnn".  Who knew JoAnn was the Aldi of craft stores?)

At this point I started wishing I had kept the old cover to use as a pattern.  Send in the freezer paper! I just had to trim the edge a bit, then I marked it with where I needed to make my cuts. This picture looked a lot sharper on my little lcd screen. Hrmm. I made cuts where the seat met the seat back and did a very narrow 1/8 hem around them.

Then outside with all my tools to staple it to the bottom. BH was napping, and I didn't think a staple gun and hammer would help with that.  I hate upholstering things. I can never get the corners to look great, and it's always puckered. What's funny is the one upholstering expert I know is the nicest person ever and would probably give me the side eye for not asking for help. To which I would respond, "I can do it mySELF!" Following the trend of use-what-you-find, I used a tiny crochet hook like an awl to poke through the fabric while putting the screws back. 1. Blue tape kept them totally organized. Win. 2. I'm glad I took pictures of the chair before I took it apart because on one side there were seven holes and only five screws. Whew.

Boom! Next up: cushions. PX looked at it and said, "Uhh...I wanted the whole thing to be that blue." Wait for it, son. Wait for it!

Rockin' Chair

This rocking chair has seen better days.

Where do we begin? With a bullet-pointed list.

• The corduroy is at LEAST thirty years old and has never been cleaned.
• Staples are coming undone.
• The cushion on the back of the chair was mysteriously attached permanently to the chair (look at the second knob doo-hickey from the left). 
• Bottom left corner is peeling off.
• It wobbles a LOT. 

But! It's a family heirloom, and kids just destroy nice stuff anyway, so I've let it sit as-is since we brought it to our home.  When we were packing up my parents' house a very wise aunt suggested I NEEDED to keep it.  It didn't take much convincing to agree, though I wish mom and dad had kept the all-wooden one.

Because cleaning wood is a heck of a lot easier than upholstering. 

Here's the bottom of the chair. Yes, I thought it said "ass toys" when I first glanced at it.  Eek. The only thing holding on the skirt was a line of staples which I easily removed with the wrong tool. Note to self: organize the tools. I snipped off the one loop connecting the removable pad to the chair. I still don't understand how mom accidentally sewed it on. It looks like it would have been a LOT more effort. Maybe she was sick of us taking it off and playing with it. That's a pretty likely scenario, actually...

 Bottom of the chair! Complete with particle board (guess it HAS to be upholstered after all), a few screw holes, dripping poly, some splitting wood (uh, what was that about....wobbling?) and a few extra screws.  Not sure what those are all about.

I saved this picture on my computer as "naked chair", which might cause a few double-takes in the future. Here's the progress as of the end of nap time today. I need to clean it really well and think about what comes next. I *think* that unless I do a skirt again, I'll need to remove the legs. All those extra screw holes and splitting wood makes me think I should leave that alone and just make a dang skirt. Decisions, decisions!