No! Don't Sit There!

I went back to work on the chair without a home this morning. Poor little orphan chair. It definitely isn't Tessie's style and she keeps asking why I am wasting time on it....It's a little to cutesy for her taste.

Anyway, I finished tufting the seat and in the photo you can see that I have started putting the pieces together.

This is one chair that I won't attempt to share the pattern with you. There are too many things that have to be done individually on each chair. It has to be adjusted every time because of the thickness of the fabric and the padding. I have to make a new pattern for the back cover piece every time I make it.

I will tell you about the tufting though. I work the pattern of the tufting out with the help of graph paper and I always poke the holes in the card stock before hand.

Then I start in the center and work my way out to the edges. This assures a more even tufting. Every stitch is done by poking down through the hole, turning over the whole thing and making sure that the needle goes back through a few threads from where it came out and then turning it back over to see that the needle comes out in the same hole where I started.

I do all of this before I glue the edges to the back of the card stock. I clip the fabric all around and cut Vs in the selvage so that there will be no overlapping of the fabric on the back.

This velveteen is thicker than I usually like to use for upholstery, so it it doubly important to have no overlaps.

After everything is glued together, I cut the back piece to fit and cover it with fabric in the same way, but without the padding. It has to be larger than the tufted piece or it won't stretch around to the edges of that piece.

When that piece is added, I pin it all together until the glue is dry.

The last step is to add braid or bunka to cover the edges of all the seams.

I made Tessie stand beside the chair so that you could see the whole thing. If she sits in it, you wouldn't be able to see any of the tufting at all.

That didn't make her happy. It is cold and windy outside and it has been hailing a bit all morning.

She is complaining, "It's cold and nasty. I don't like it one little bit. I need somewhere warm to sit in a snit. And let me tell you, I AM in a SNIT! It's hailing again! For crying out loud! This is Arizona! It's not supposed to be like this. I need warmth!"

She just zapped herself away after that.

I finally found her. She was in the bedroom snuggling down into a scarf that I just finished knitting.

This was fun. It is called a "Magic Scarf". I found the pattern on the net.

You knit the scarf like you see it on the right side. When you are finished, the last row is knit in a special way, dropping every other stitch and binding off the stitches in between....Then....Remember when we used to wear nylons that got runs in them? That's what you do. You pull down the stitches that you dropped. You get a finished scarf that is very soft, and twice as long as it was when you started. It's kind of a cool way to do a scarf fast. Not terribly fancy, but very warm!

Tessie just announced, "I am staying here for the rest of the day. Bring me some bug juice and a couple of doughnuts. Then turn the TV on and leave me alone......Who needs your new chair? You can keep that. I am keeping the scarf!"

Hey! This means that I have the rest of the day without interruptions! It won't last. It never does.

See you tomorrow.