Wow. Just, Wow.

Every now and again people surprise me in a big way.

A couple of weeks ago, in upholstery class, I finished covering the core of my current chair. All that's left to do is make the cushion covers for the back and the seat. Because of the size of the cushions and the "grain" of my fabric, I need about 3.5 yards to finish up. Can you guess where this is going??

I laid out the cushion cover "patterns" (aka: the deconstructed old covers) on my remaining yardage and my heart sank. I only had enough to do one side of each cusion and MAYBE, if I cut it well, I'd have enough for the boxing, which is that vertical piece that fits between the top and bottom of the cushion. I talked it through with my instructor and figured out how much additional yardage I'd need. So... no big deal. I'd just stop at Joann Fabrics over the weekend and pick up what I needed.

Oh... the optimism of an occasional sewer.

I'm sure that those of you who work with fabric more often than I are aware of the nuances of buying fabric. Things like "exclusive" to a store means that you can't buy it ANYWHERE ELSE. And that you should probably buy what you need up front because anything can be discontinued at any time.

Yeah. Totally discontinued. All that was left in the store was the 8x8 fabric swatch (which I bought). The manager confirmed that there was none at the other store in town or in the warehouse. He recommended that I check the website. I left the store feeling desolate and angry and I checked Joann.com as soon as I got home.



sad, little 8x8 swatches



All that was available on the website were 8x8 fabric swatches. Well, at this point I was desperate so I put a bunch of the swatches in my shopping cart. I figured that, at least, I could make a "patchwork" underside for the cushions in the correct fabric.

Two days later my phone rings and it's a number I don't recognize so I let it go to voice mail. Turns out that it was Wendy from Joann Fabrics' fulfillment center. She called to make sure I understood that I was ordering swatches and not yardage. LOL!  So, I called her back and got HER voice mail. I left her a message telling her my tale of woe and explaining why I was buying all the swatches. Then I half-jokingly added that, if she could find any yardage anywhere, I'd pay anything for it.

Well... two days later and my phone rang again. I recognized the number this time so I answered. Wendy had located yardage!!!!! I nearly fell on the floor. She went on to explain that it's against policy to ship discontinued fabric between stores so she was going to have to work out the logistics. I told her to order me five yards (not taking any chances this time!) if they had that much. About an hour later I got a call that the fabric was shipping to my local Joann's and that the store manager would call me when it arrived. A few days later my local Joann's manager called me with the good news - the fabric was in her store! It was a March Miracle. Seriously.

This kind of "above and beyond" service is pretty rare these days so, when it happens, I'm always sort of gobsmacked. And, no offense to Joann Fabrics, but I never expect this level of help from them. I shop there often and have come to expect very little. A perfect example is the fact that the local stores don't have access to the store inventories on a national level. My fabric was found in a store in Texas. However, my local store would never, ever, know that. And, even if I got on the phone and called every Joann's in the country, the best they could do would be to ship the inventory to my local store. In other words, I couldn't pay the Texas store for my yardage and have them ship it directly to my home. This seems like a flaw. The other rule that baffles me is the "no shipping of discontinued merchandise". I mean... if a customer wants the last of your discontinued "exclusive to Joann" fabric, you'd think you'd want to get rid of it quickly.

Regardless of these gripes, I don't have enough words in my vocabulary to describe how happy I am to have my fabric and how incredibly grateful I am to Wendy for going above and beyond. It's people like her that will keep me shopping at their stores.

Here's to more great customer service experiences in our lives!

- Alex

Crafty Resolutions 2013

Another new year and another opportunity to take stock, judge our past 12 months, and resolve to create a new and better life in the coming year.

2012 brought an unexpected job change for me and, along with it, a massive distraction that has kept me from any meaningful crafting for months. My life was upended and the ship hasn't righted itself yet. Things are very out of balance.

I miss being driven to "make". My brain has been so filled with all the new stuff I have to learn (a new industry, new people, new tasks), I've had trouble lighting the creative spark. I need to find a way to bring that back to the forefront - to look forward to what's on my needles or what new craft I can learn.

A very wise friend and mentor told me once that resolutions "set us up for failure and feeling sh**ty about ourselves. The resolutions people make are usually about fixing themselves and their lives, based on “there is something wrong here” or even worse, “there is something wrong with me.”

[Editorial tangent: if you're interested in doing something more productive than just making resolutions, I invite you to visit his blog post entitled "Looking Back, Looking Forward" which is a three-part exercise developed to help you create closure for this year and plan for the next.]

So, I figured it might be a good idea to apply this thinking to my crafting. There are a lot of things I'd like to to with my knitting/sewing/upholstery/etc but I need to be realistic about what I can accomplish, especially considering my current "creative block". With this in mind, here are a few crafty goals for 2013:

There's an app for that.

1. More sewing. Cassandra far surpassed me in the sewing category - from her gorgeous Bernina machines to her amazing foray into quilting. I bought the materials to make an apron and have had my eyes on cool aprons that I've seen in stores. My resolution is to make at least one apron from an original design this year. And maybe start a quilt (although that might be stretching it a bit!)

This can't be too hard, right?

2. Knitting cables. For those of you who have read our blog for a while, you may recognize this resolution from a couple of years ago. Sadly, I STILL (two years later) have not actually knitted cables yet. *facepalm* I cannot begin to express how embarrased I am by this admisssion. So... this year for sure! Maybe something easy, like a cabled hat.

Something like this...

3. Needlepoint. Years ago, a dear friend of mine's grandmother needlepointed new seats for her dining room chairs. I was enamored of the finished product. They were sturdy and beautiful and had the advantage of being exactly what she wanted in her dining room. I'm fascinated with the designs of William Morris and want to do something in that style for my chairs. It's a huge undertaking so my resolution is not to do them all but to find some designs I like and to start one. I'll be learning a new skill so I expect my first to be a bit wonky anyway. :)




The chair that started it all.



4. Finish upholstering stuff. I originally took the upholstery class because I didn't want to pay someone to recover a particular chair. I'm now working on chair number six. Sadly, I thought I was going to have all my upholstery completed by December 2011. Ha!! I took one semester off and I had one project that was a total bear and took an entire semester to finish. However, I have no space for new furniture so my goal is to finish what I've got left by the end of fall semester 2013.



I want a Kenyan Top Bar hive.



5. BEES! I've talked about getting bees for the last three years. I came close last year but waited to long and then it was too late to order the actual insects. I've decided on the type of hive I want so I just need to buy one and get the bees at the right time this spring. Fingers crossed that it actually happens in 2013.

I hope that 2013 brings all of you health, happiness, and success in whatever goal(s) you set for yourself. Just remember, don't make resolutions that make you feel sh**ty about yourself. Set goals that, when you reach them, allow you to celebrate how awesome you are.



Happy New Year, friends.

- Alex

Progress

As you may have read previously on Ooo! Shiny, I am learning how to upholster furniture. Tuesday, November 30, 2010 marked the last class of my third semester.

The chair so far - new fabric, no trim yet

This past semester, I worked on a chair for a friend. I thought it would be easy because the chair is a Lincoln Rocker - the same style chair as my very first upholstery project. My Lincoln Rocker is a antique reproduction  that had been my grandmother's. As such, it was fairly easy to deconstruct and reupholster - there were no surprises when I took the old upholstery off and, because it's a wood-framed chair, I didn't have to do any sewing.

My friend's rocker is a real, honest-to-god antique. It has a stunning "arts and crafts" style and the wood is stained a dark chestnut color. It's in beautiful shape, with nary a scratch or divot in the wood. The only thing marring this otherwise gorgeous chair was the old, harvest-gold, velveteen fabric. If I had to guess, the last time it was upholstered was in the '70s. So, when my friend bought a new sofa, she decided it was time to get this, her favorite chair, redone. I gladly took on the project to help save her some money and to provide me with some more practice on this style of upholstering. It also gave me the opportunity to procrastinate on my next two projects, both of which are going to require an inordinate amount of sewing (my least favorite activity.)

First let it be said that the last upholstery job on this chair was top-quality. The fabric might have been hideous but the work was done so well that a lot of the "engineering" of the chair (springs, webbing, etc.) could be left intact. However, like other antique projects before it, the wood was downright brittle and every tack was removed with a prayer that a chunk of the frame wouldn't come out with it. Suffice it to say, there will be wood filler in this chair's future.

As I removed the old upholstery, the chair's quirks started presenting themselves. One thing I learned early on is that padding and fabric really hold a chair together. When you start taking these bits off, it's not unusual for a weak framed piece of furniture to, quite literally, fall apart. While this one didn't disintegrate before my eyes, its weaknesses became apparent quickly. I spent two entire classes honing my woodworking skills. The right arm was separated from the frame, necessitating glue and clamping. The lumbar brace was broken in half, which I jury-rigged by screwing a metal brace across the break and then gluing and clamping the whole thing for a week. One of the rockers started splitting, requiring more glue and a clamp. Etc. Etc. Etc. I learned more about carpentry on this job than I did upholstery - which is sort of the point, I guess.

Interestingly, I've complained less about this project that I did the one before it - which came with its own set of problems. I find that I like the actual "construction" of the furniture and I don't mind doing the woodworking. Finding and fixing these problems became a challenge that I was proud to find solutions for. At one point, my teacher complimented me on a couple of my "fixes," amazed at my ingenuity. That was more satisfying praise than the normal "good job" than I get on my actual upholstery work.

Maybe my next class will be furniture building or refinishing or something. After I finish my next two chairs.

- Alex

Cover Me.

Over the years, I've inherited a lot of furniture from my family - most of it cast-offs that were "donated" to help me furnish whatever place I was living at the time. To my benefit, my family's hand-me-downs are usually pretty nice. I ended up with some antiques that have a lot of sentimental value attached.  Also, my home ended up looking like my mother's, but that's a different blog post altogether.

Not my actual furniture...

One chair, in particular, was always a favorite of mine from my mother's house. I couldn't believe it when she offered it to me early in my adulthood. Over the years I've come to realize why she was willing to give it up - it's a monster of a piece of furniture. It's an unusual wing-back chair in that the "wings" aren't angled against the back. In fact, the back is concave, creating a huge expanse. The thing is easily four feet tall at the back and the wingspan is a good three feet wide. You really have to have a room that can handle a chair like that.

At some point, my mother had a slipcover made for the monster. The original upholstery was something sort of boring and "classic." The slipcover, on the other hand, was all-'70's-all-the-time - sporting massive poppies on a field of white. When donated to my first apartment, it came to me this way - with old upholstery and a screamin' loud slipcover.

After a few years, I had the chair upholstered in an appropriate fabric for the time. It was the '80s. Need I say more?

In 1997 I started looking into having it reupholstered again. Somehow, in the intervening years, the cost to have this work done had more than doubled. So, I lived with the crappy '80s fabric by using a pillow and throw draped on it to detract from the hideousness.

One day in the early 2000's (the "aughts" as I like to call them), I heard a rumor about an adult education upholstery class at one of the local colleges. According to legend, the class would fill up so fast that, unless you had an "in", you'd never get a space. That scared me off trying to register for a few years. Then, finally, I gave it a shot. Sure enough - class, full. Waiting list, long. Argh. That experience delayed me another couple of years. You might infer that I didn't really want to take the class and, frankly, you might be a little bit right. Even when learning a useful skill, it's still school.

One day one of my co-workers overheard me talking about this mythical upholstery class. Turns out that his wife was one of the lucky few who had actually taken the class for a few semesters. He offered to talk to her and get some insider info for me. Believe it or not, it was like negotiating detente in the Middle East. He would come back to me with questions. I send answer back through him. Eventually, I got the name of the instructor (there were a few - some better than others), a class day and location, and some tips on how to get in. My procrastination paid off and, using the tips provided, I managed to get in to the fall semester 2009.

1st completed project - Grandma's chair

So began my upholstery education. I didn't want to tackle the crazy wing back chair first, just in case I sucked at this art, so I did a chair that had belonged to one of my grandmothers. Turns out, upholstering is way easier than one would imagine and project number one came out pretty good. Second semester, I did the wing back. The damn thing was so complicated that I'm actually just finishing it now - three classes into third semester. Next on the docket is a Lincoln rocker that I'm upholstering for a friend.

I have two more chairs of my own that I'd like to upholster and will probably continue to take the class in order to do them. That way, I don't have to buy any equipment and, if I get stuck, the instructor is there to help. This is the the reason people never "drop out" - as long as you've got stuff to recover, you never leave fold. It's rather cult-like actually. Hopefully, when my chairs are complete (two more semesters??) I'll be done with the class - unlike some of my classmates who scour craigslist and yard sales for new projects. I have a total of 1,500 square feet of living space and there's no room for anything else - unless I furnish my unfinished basement.  Hmmm.... maybe I can take the class indefinitely!

- Alex

The Infamous Wing Back - not quite finished.