Pictures and chairs

I was recently asked if I would make a picture for a little girl's birthday. I was so pleased as it allowed all the fun of creating a picture, with none of the jiggery-pokery (more technical sewing) needed to then turn it into something useful or practical. I had recently bought some of the blue polka dot material shown in the background and enjoyed using it as I love the shade of blue.

Here it is framed. To mount it I used a spray adhesive that you'd usually use to baste quilt batting in place, which made the job of stretching the fabric smooth and holding it in place much easier. Her mother also wanted a memo board making for her.

I love making these - as a staple gun bares a close resemblance to a power tool. It makes me long to do an upholstery course...but a friend tells me that you need to also be skilled with woodwork (and real power tools) to do that. Years ago I found an enormous and very old Parker Knoll armchair in a skip and managed to get a passing black cab to drive us both to my office, where the flea-ridden chair sat next to me all day while I worked. Once home that evening I disposed of all the padding and coverings and spent hours sanding and polishing it (with an electric sander, because that is one that even I can use successfully) and later chose some beautiful thick upholstery-weight chenille from John Lewis, which I hammered on with antique upholstery pins. The padding was my downfall though...I didn't get it quite right and it ended up being the chair in the corner that looked lovely, but felt slightly dangerous to sit on. It moved with us to four different houses over the space of ten years. But now it is in the garage, stripped back to its wooden frame again. I'm having a big think about whether I should see if I have any better ideas for giving it spring and padding a decade later. I tried to find a picture of it, which meant going back through the photographs taken at our old house...which meant looking at lots of pictures of when the children were small and watching silent jerky videos taken on our first digital camera that didn't have any sound. I didn't find the chair, but two hours have passed and I have done nothing but think back to how lovely it was to have small ones around the house and how I wish that time would slow down...or even go backwards. Very unproductive...but that's okay as the doctor told me this morning that I have tonsillitis...which I'm thinking justifies an afternoon of bed rest and time-wasting.