Home again home again jiggity jig II

Well, Gentle Readers, it would appear that half the population of Sydney decided to return to the Big Smoke at the same time as we did - we got half an hour into our journey on Sunday night and realised that because of the volume of traffic, it was probably going to take us 5 hours or so to get home - a trip that normally takes 2.5 hours... so we turned around.  Lucky for us Kaz & Az are pretty laid back, and we hadn't worn out our welcome.  Monday morning came & 8.08am saw us on the road - we were home by 10.20am.  


What did we do?  Well, as usual, Mr Golightly toiled mightily in the vineyard, winding up wire, splitting wood and help Az build some raised vegie beds, and I worked on Kaz's dressing gown, getting it 98% done, with the only bit remaining the really fiddly bit, which is to put the piping on the sleeves.  Being the fussy creature that I am, I want to use a method which will allow me to have only one visible seam, but I want the outside fabric to show on the inside of the sleeves too - I believe Vogue Sewing has the answers, so I'll be checking that out today, especially as it appears Autumn has hit with vengeance, and it's going to be cold and rainy all day... perfect for sewing!


For the first time in ages I didn't take any photos with my actual camera, only one rather nice piccie of Mr G with the pooch, her in her favourite spot, ie, right on top of Mr G, with her ears up, waiting for him to move so she can lick him into immobility... she's such a softie... although when the people on bicycles rode down the driveway & sat down to have their picnic, she set up such a barking & carrying on that it dawned on them that the land wasn't actually a park, despite the close resemblance, and scurried back up the driveway, with a "sorry" floating back our way.  Didn't do much to stop the dog from barking, but it did give us all a bit of a chuckle...

I have ordered some fabric, to make Az a footstool - I took my project up for show & tell, and he was so impressed he wants one.  Now all I have to do is find time to squeeze it in - I'm sure I'll manage!  This is what Kaz & I found trawling through upholstery fabric on Etsy:

and this one, which is also fantastic:

which I am just waiting for the owner to make me a custom listing so I can buy it & then Madam Kaz can choose her favourite.  I think they would both be amazing, but we shall see.


And now, given that I've been awake since 0430, I think I'm going to crawl back into bed and thank the Guvnmnt for my extra day off.  Enjoy it, Gentle Readers, I'm going to!


Ciao!

Calico has no stretch

And so, Gentle Readers, the balls of my thumbs actually ache from the effort of trying to pull calico down over a layer of conglomerate foam:

Can you believe this image was found under 'conglomorate upholstery foam' in Google Images?  Which part of this foot and particularly unattractive shoe is foam, hmmm?


And a layer of linters, which is a cotton by-product used to provide the softness in your seat:

Yes, Google Images is excelling itself today...

and a layer of 20mm/.78" green foam:

That's so nicely green and foamy, isn't it?  All on the top of zig-zag springs...

Damn.  They found one!

Anyway, it's hard work and my thumbs are a bit sore from all the straining, holding, stapling, and digging out the staples when it wasn't quite smooth enough to keep the Upholstery Munchkin who teaches us on Mondays, happy.  

He's a lovely man, beautiful green eyes and a great store of knowledge and skill, but he loves a chat.  He gets started on something, and Bam!  he's off on a tangent and we're stuck 375 years ago when he did his apprenticeship, fondling coconut fibre and visiting Rapunzel in her beautifully upholstered tower...

In other news, Madam Late is so far behind the rest of us now she's almost still in the other room, and we can't decide if the root cause is 

a) self-medication (as in "she's zonked")

b) alcohol (as in "she's permanently bombed/pissed"), 

c) deafness, or 

d) she's just plain dumb.  

She knows how far behind she is, so she can't be that dumb, because she wanders round the room like Lady MacBeth sleepwalking through the castle, rubbing her hands saying "Oh, I'm so far behind", which means that her projects have become a bit like King Duncan, where she was keen to take them on, but a teeeeny bit regretful after the deed was done... "Out, damn'd chair, out I say".  She hasn't finished her second child's chair, her footstool, her two vinyl stool tops, or her drop-in seat, which is what we did yesterday.  Although, we have two days until the end of term, so if she can alter time, speed up the harvest and get teleported off this rock, she may be OK.  Use the Force, young Late.

My, aren't we a cultured Golightly this morning?  

In other news, Mr Golightly is at home today, slightly unwell, and all my damn' fine plans to go into town for a visit with the bank and lunch with Ms Creek are up the ... creek.  That's fine.  He's a bit 'in-his-cave' when he's unwell, a fact I may have alluded to in previous posts, so my plan is to ignore him completely, except for throwing food into the cave opening at regular intervals, and spend the day in my sewing room, coming out only to feed the animals, and put more washing in the machines.  It is raining, so it's quite justified to use the dryer for some things... honest.

I have an order for three doorstops made from this (and don't think I'm relying on Google images here, nosireebob):

and I made these for the lovely and glamorous lady who sold me (amongst other things) some new face cream:

Do you like the button accessory touch?  I know people tie things onto them like sea-shells and such, but I don't have a ready supply of those.  I think the accessorising button is quite a nice idea.  Hopefully BJ will too - she's going to collect them tomorrow... so I will report back.

And now, it's 9.00am, the office is open for business, and I must away to the shower, the laundry, and then, so exciting, the sewing room!  

Ciao!

Well, not much stuff has happened...

Let's see, Gentle Readers.  It's 2.28AM.  I went to bed at 9.30PM, pretty tired after a fairly busy day getting organised for a girlie family gathering, where the extremely glamourous purveyor of a well-known brand of skin care products came round to show us her wares, give the two 13-year olds facials and a little bit of make-up (they were so excited!) and sell us lots of (admittedly) lovely products... and then BANG!  I was awake.


Actually, I blame the leftovers I had for dinner.  It was a combination of lamb ribs (yummy) and indian-style osso buco (can you believe that even exists?) and I think it was a bit too much for my poor gut to cope with, so here I am.  I've had a glass of milk with Milo in it to slice through the heartburn, but there's no getting away from the wide-awakedness of it all...


Anyway, you're definitely due an update, Gentle Readers, because my last post was sketchy to say the least.  I was rushing out the door to something, don't ask me what.  Oh yes, School.  Child's chair is definitely finished, but the teacher didn't even look at them until Friday night, so no mark, no bringing home, and therefore no pics.  Sorry.


The upholstered footstool is also almost finished, remind me when I'm running my own upholstery shop to put up a big big sign saying "no velvet, no stripes, no checks".  Big lessons learnt this week about how hard it is up make nice box pleats using velvet...


Anyway, it looks like this:

Except mine is a nice pale blue velvet with a fairly '80's motif rather than that extremely nasty brocade, has five buttons in the top and only one lot of piping.  Here they've used the first row of piping to make the foam block look like two smallish blocks instead of one big one.  Ours really are two blocks, held together and in place by the buttons which are on mattress twine, which is then pulled through both blocks of foam to the underneath, and tied off using a slip knot - the buttoning needles you use to do this are incredibly long and sharp and could kill you:

 Here's a selection of the tools we use everyday.The buttoning needle is the second one from the bottom, and it's 12"/30cm long.  

The bottom tool is called a regulator, and it's also known in our class as 'The Enforcer', 'The Terminator' and 'The Force'. as in "Use the Force, Luke".  It's extremely handy for shoving material into tight spaces if you're wussy about hurting your fingers (oh yes!) on the backs of chairs...

Where was I?  I just fell into an upholstery-tool-lust moment & had to go & look on eBay to see what there was... Anyway, the skirt is made up of piping & a very long piece of material, into which you have to fold pleats that sit right on the corners, and then you have to stitch the pleats.  They're allowed a tolerance (how much it's allowed to be off the corner) of 1mm, or .039".  Yep, .039".  That's not a lot, really.  I had three goes at sewing it together before I got them to sit on the corners to the teacher's satisfaction, then I had to do the skirt & piping, which is why I never want to sew anything with velvet ever again.  My respect for Upholsterers continues to grow...

Anyway, all that's left is to staple it on, back-tack it (this is the process where you take cardboard strips and insert them right under the piping, then drive them into the wood using your staple gun - it stops the piping from falling down when the piece is finished..) and then cover the bottom with calico, and bam!  Upholstered footstool, anybody?  I'll be (hopefully) bringing it home on Monday night, so pics.  Honest.  No, honest.

In other news of unparalleled excitement, the quote for the gutterguard arrived.  No issue with that... but they wanted $4500 to supply & install a water tank which costs $770 in the shops.  I'm pretty sure I can rope Mr Golightly into doing all the work they included in the price, which would take no more than one day to do - even if they were charging $100 an hour for labour, that's only $800, plus $770 for the tank, maybe $1000 for parts (unlikely, it's a tap, some hose, a first flush water divertor to keep all the crap out of the tank [probably no more than $250, according to this site]) and a concrete slab for the tank to stand on, that's $2700.  Where does the other $1800 go?  The staff Christmas party?  I so don't think they'll be getting our order...

And of course I've been having such a lot of fun making Treasuries of vintage clothes on Etsy - if you haven't ever looked into the vintage side of Etsy, it is amazing.  There is everything from hat blocks (I saw a beauty yesterday for $65.00...) to shoe lasts to hats, bags, shoes, jewellery, kitchenware, you name it.  I found a beautiful purple suede Liz Claiborne shopping tote which had had 600 odd views, at least 25 hearts & was an absolute bargain as far as I could see, but nobody had bought it!  Anyway, I couldn't resist, even though it wasn't you-know-what colour (red, Red RED!), so I'll report back when it arrives.

And now, Gentle Readers, I feel like I might be ready to go back to bed.  The Milo has hit the spot, and my eyelids are drooping.  So, Buona Notte!

PS Happy Birthday to the very lovely MIss Vetty!