StAlbertMini: Table workshop

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Table workshop

A week or so ago, I wrote a tutorial for making a table for a "second Tuesday" workshop that I planned to lead. (The "second Tuesday" refers to the fact that our official MEE workshop is on the first Tuesday of the month; our general meeting is on the third Tuesday and Tina hosts a quarter scale workshop on the fourth Tuesday of the month.)

Initially, about 12 people had signed up but for various reasons (illness, other commitments, etc.), only five were able to attend. So I'll try to schedule an additional workshop to accommodate those who couldn't make it last night.

I had space available for 10 people and could have worked with that but, quite honestly, the five who did attend were such a perfect size group/personalities that I could at least try to give individual attention. (I'm NOT a good instructor to a group but I think I do reasonably well on a one-to-one basis.)

We mostly worked with square food picks and matboard to get the feeling of making the table.

Here Judi has her table legs and aprons waiting for the glue to dry:

And Dolores waiting for the glue to dry on her legs and apron:

One of the great things about a small workshop is that you can individualize what you do. Because we were working with items 'at hand', Pat and Ruth took four of the square food picks, glued and clamped them together to make more solid table legs then cut them to the length they wanted for their tables.

Pat is applying the glue to the top of her table base:

She also chose to put the apron of the table on the outer side of the legs (as opposed to the inner side as in the tutorial). Her reasoning was that doing it that way hid some of the joints of the four picks in the legs. And that was a great point.Here's Pat's table.

Wendy also made a great table. She kept with the original size of the prototype but shortened the legs.

Two of the ladies who came last night have limited hand strength and were worried about their ability to cut wood. They were SO pleased when they tried my "Super Easy Cutter" from Midwest Products. It's available in the Edmonton area from Luba or through your local miniature store.

After we got most of the table constructions completed, we stopped for great conversation, coffee, tea, cider, and a wonderful gluten-free chocolate cake that Judi provided..

Pat brought two very large bags of upholstery/drapery samples for us to share.

This is only about 1/4 of one of the bags that Pat shared with us.

I thought I had shown you my fabric stash before but can't find the pictures of it. Suffice it to say, that it is HUGE and I don't need to add to it:

And I resisted some of the most incredibly beautiful fabric samples: pieces of fabric in almost every possible colour; some suede-type finishes, beautiful polished cotton pieces that looked like leather...

UNTIL: I came across these beautiful sheer pieces of fabric. They are polyester blends so not necessarily the best fabrics for mini use but they are gorgeous and the samples are 26" x 8 1/2| so are a great size!