Jack Pot!

Driving home from the fabric store one day, I notice what I thought might have been a treasure in an alley, to pull off a discover it was only trash! And as I turned around to get back on the main road I spotted what looked like a bolt sticking out of a dumpster, so of coarse I stopped to take a look. There were TWO bolts of Knoll Textiles, fabric dumped, still in plastic, waiting for me.

I had to back our car up to the dumpster and use the bumper as a boost, to get in the dumpster to pull off bags of garbage, to be able to pull out the heavy bolts of fabric! I shoved them in the car and drove home happy as a lark.

I can't ever find nice gray fabric at our fabric store, I'm always looking. So who can believe that I just found two bolts, 45 yards of beautiful , expensive fabric. The fabric is still sold by Knoll a is $29 a yard, so that means I found over $1300, worth of fabric!

So now I have no excuse to not start or finish a project, I've got enough fabric to upholster anything I may possibly bring home.

Finished daybed

Well, there it is in all of its glory. The little DIY I had posted about a couple of weeks ago. The project was very simple, a solid wood door from my husband, the large cushions were found and given a through cleaning, the hairpin legs were also found by my husband attached to a old warped piece of plywood. The back cushions were in my attic, I bought a couple of yards of unbleached muslin, I had the gray wool for the contrast welt on the back cushions, and after using some danish oil, I decided the color was too light, and bought a small can of walnut stain.

So, the total on that is about $10.

I'm happy with the finished project, and would recommend it to anyone in need of a couch, with a tight budget.

(my welting is getting a lot better, and with a few more projects, i'm sure I will be totally happy with it!)

Self-welt

This is the first time I've actually used welting on an upholstery project. I sew on a very average Brother sewing machine, and I first of all didn't feel it was capable of sewing that many layers together nicely, I also feel that welting eats up a lot of extra fabric cutting it on the bias.

Well, I decided that I needed to better my upholstery skills, and teach myself something new. It wasn't as hard as I thought, but it also wasn't as easy as it it could have been. I thought using some left over black fabric would be a great way to use up leftovers.

I started on the bottom cushion, and had a very hard time getting the welting as tight as I wanted it, and usually if I force my machine to do something it doesn't want to, it results in breaking something. For the next cushion, I decided to just go ahead and ride the welt with my sewing foot, and that did the trick. Since I have picked up a specialty foot for my machine, and I think at this point it is going to take some practice.

These things find ME...

There she was sad and lonely. Someone had just put her out like garbage. She is truly beautiful. The wooden casing she sits on is so perfectly smooth. Her lines are dainty yet she weighs about 40 lbs.

Next up learning how to rewire a sewing machine, someone cut her cords.