All Day furniture workshop

About 20 of us showed up for today's workshop. We had all ordered kits from Nancy Summers that Lucille picked up for us at Chicago International. And Tina had hundreds of pieces of cotton and silk for sale to use as upholstery.

Hard at work!

Went around the table and took pictures of the furniture pieces in various stages of work.

Jillian had a bit of a 'toothpick explosion. VBG

I had ordered two of Nancy's easy chairs but in the meantime had changed my mind and wanted to do the wing chairs instead. Tina had one wing back kit for sale so I bought that then asked if anyone would be interested in trading a wing back kit for an easy chair kit. 

Many thanks to Lil who swapped with me so I will have two wing back chairs for a planned project (yes, I know, another one LOL). I still have two lamp kits from Grandpa's Dollhouse and I think these will go in one of them with a Bespaq cabinet I bought from Liz at Grandpa's Dollhouse to be filled with Barbara Brear's filler books and perhaps a floor lamp that I plan to make at our workshop on Tuesday night. The remaining easy chair will be upholstered in a beautiful blue brocade (from Tina) for Vern's attic. (And, yes, I will get back to that one of these days. VBG)

The kit glued and taped together.

Legs stained and the bottom added.

Front of arms and seat done.

Back and top of wings upholstered.

At this point, I was supposed to cut templates for the inside arms from index card. It's a pretty intricate template so I called it a day. After I got home, I realized that I could have used the second kit pieces to cut the template much more easily so I'll try to do that (maybe) tonight. From then on, it should be fairly easy going. Famous last words VBG!

I think that some of the templates for this kit could (and perhaps should) be done before the basic kit is assembled. Adjustments would still need to be made but I think it's much easier to cut templates using the flat individual pieces rather than trying to work with corners.

The suggested glue was Aleene's Flexible Stretchable fabric glue so Joanne and I had picked up the small (.66 fl. oz.) three pack with that plus Stop Fraying and Fabric Fusion. Quite honestly, I was not impressed with either (haven't tried the Stop Fraying yet). The other suggested adhesive was Grrip glue which isn't available here. I have Quick Grip (bought on a previous trip to the U.S.) but it warns "use in a well-ventilated area" so didn't want to try it at the church.

Sunni also taught a small, related workshop on how to make cording from embroidery floss. When I get the instruction sheet, I'll tell you more about that. (Joanne's fabric was a dark blue with gold lines on it and she made a beautiful gold cord to go with it. And Trineke made a cording with two colours of floss that will be beautiful on her project!) There was a marvelous selection of colours available as Inger had been given this incredible selection and made it available to the club.