Friday, April 13, 2012

Expunged?



This is the new word that I learned today. It means that it was erased/ no longer exists.  
 I always wonder who's reading my blog. Not that it matters of course. But I see all these different countries from where my readers are reading from and I think to myself: " do I know someone who lives there? So far, looking at just this week, I've got readers from Canada (obviously) US, Switzerland, China, Germany, Austria, UK, Japan and Latvia. There might be more that Blogger doesn't list, but that's pretty cool! I've seen that I have readers in Spain, France, Italy, and so many more places! I think it's awesome that my blog is being read world wide! and I hope it's being enjoyed.
    I went thrift shopping today with an old friend and her daughter whom I don't get to see that often. I found this amazing vintage Canadian made (from a Montreal company c. 1970's and 80's which no longer exists...or it was expunged) blazer, like the boyfriend jacket.  I wanna put some suede elbow pads on it.
Here I am,  my husband took this pic for me
in the middle of his video game

Saturday, April 7, 2012

YaRRRRR!! I'm a Pirate...

...because I swore like a sailor doing this project. I normally don't swear but for some reason the projects that I do can sometimes frustrate me to no end... or maybe I was just having a bad day. The whole day started off bad. On a regular day, I would get up at 6:30 am, do my regular morning routines of showering and such, put on my running shoes (the ones that have my insoles in them)  get to work by 8 am, do my duties there, come home and work on a project for two hours and then leave for my tutoring job and be home by 7:30. This day however went down hill after 7:53 am when I got out of  my car, looked down at me feet and realized that I am not wearing my running shoes with the insoles in them, but instead I'm wearing my Walmart loafers on which the heals ar worn so low that I feel like I am standing on an upward slope. I get into the staff room only to find out that my work partner is not in. I now have to do twice as much work and run around like " a bat out of hell" as my boss put it just to try to keep up...which didn't happen. While rushing around the store trying to put things in order on the shelves, a wooden cabinet falls on my hand leaving a giant welt and a numb feeling running up my arm.  I get home after my shift, to continue working on my project only to hammer my thumb, and sew my own finger with the sewing machine...while my hands were already calloused and swollen from removing thousands of staples the days before.
How I felt  all day

Maybe I should explain my project. In my last post I may have mentioned something about this project . I bought a wing back chair on Kijiji. What a great site! I love Kijiji. The chair wasn't spectacular. It wasn't horrible either. It was a plain wing back chair. I only paid $20 for it. I then went to Ikea, picked out some fabric that had just come to the store that day. It has cabbages on it. I had to buy a new foot for my sewing machine, some chord and stronger thread than I had previously been using.
I then had to watch some YouTube videos on how to reupholster a wing back chair. This is how I learn. I also had to watch a video on piping to learn how to make those round fabric edges on furniture.

As I'm watching this video with my husband by my side, there was a scene where the chair was completely stripped down, and I turned to him and said " you know...I think I feel pretty confident about the first half, but I will probably have a meltdown at some point during this project. He then proceeded to ask for directions on what to do in that situation. I said  "just give me chocolate or something"


So I stripped the chair down, pulling out the thousands of staples with the improper tools that got the job done and painted the legs of the chair ( actually Fritz painted them for me) . My hands were calloused, cut and swollen the next morning. The next day, I re-padded, and put down the larger parts of the fabric. At this point I started to get frustrated and ate the chocolate bar that my husband left for me. I thought what I was feeling was the melt down. I shouldn't have wasted that chocolate bar.
The next day was the scenario explained above (wrong shoes, crushed hand, hammered my thumb, sewed my finger). So After sewing my finger, I decided I needed to make a petticote for my dress. ( the one one that I mentioned in my previous post) Of course the thought wasn't  "i need a petticote for that dress, I'll make one next week when I'm done this." My thoughts go more along the lines of  " Oh my goodness...I need a petticote ...gotta make it NOW!"  I have no idea how to make a petticote, so I made it up but whatever I made works well and makes the dress look good. However, while laying out the fabric for this sub-project, ( 10 minutes before I had to leave for my other job... and remember this is the hand-crushing, finger-sewing thumb-hammering day)  I took a step back to look at the fabric only to ram my heel into the leg of a project I started last summer. At this point I say a couple sailor words at an excessive volume, and Fritz looks up at me as I burst into tears. This is when the chocolate bar would have come in handy had I not ate is so greedily at an unnecessary time in the project.


after the petticote. 
before the petticote. Not too bad,
 a little flat though













The Before                                                    The During                                                         The After


So anyways, to finish off this post, I completed both the main project and the sub project. The chair has a couple of mistakes in it but fixing them would require me to strip the entire chair down again. I had to make a couple of stitches which are a little bit noticeable but these mistakes will be noted for next time. Either way, I learned how to do piping and how to reupholster a chair ( in my own way ). I still need to replace the foam cushion. As you can see in the pic, it's a little flat.