The English Armchair Abroad

French Bergere

It is always a pleasure (relief perhaps?) to find new clients especially when they come out of the blue. 

A few months ago we had dinner with some friends and met a lady who lived not far from us.  She had visited our house a few years ago when we hosted a theatre company for two nights (that was amazing) and when I said I was an upholsterer she asked for my card.

A little while later I quoted her for four chairs, two Bergeres and two Empires style and before I knew it I was collecting the Bergeres.

Bergeres are different to other chairs for various reasons.  The seats are unsprung and in fact are basically flat apart from the lip at the front which keeps the cushion in place (incidentally - in the picture below the cushions look enormous;  they're not.)  The seat is worked quickly and easily which is lucky because the back and inside arms make life more complicated! The fabric on the inside comes all the way around.  It is joined in two places - the arms to the back, you can just about see the joins in the last photo - and it has to be shaped over the edge roll and also pulled down to form the shape of the back.  They are fiddly and take time and patience.   I nicknamed these chairs the adolescents because every time I thought I had them sorted they presented me with another problem.  Still, they were done on time and I was pleased with them.

Max and I delivered them last night to a very happy client who has told me to clear the decks in January when I can start work on the next two.  That's the sort of client I like!

October's job

Work has not been as plentiful as I would like this year.  I had some at the beginning of the year and then it just evaporated until this little French chair came along.  It belongs to a friend of mine and had been stored at the back of a barn for years.  The back was very broken and the fabric faded away to almost nothing.  The panel in the middle is a handworked tapestry and in fact the back of it still had its lovely original colour, and look how the mossy green used to be a turquoise colour:

This is the chair as I received it - you can just about see the cracks on the back frame.

It's been transformed into this...

Yes, it does look a little lopsided at the back.  This is because the back was completely broken and my wonderful carpenter had to reconstruct it.  He did the most amazing job and used as much of the original wood as he could - the lopsided part originally came from further round the frame.  There's also a slight variation of colour on the back frame as I then had to bring the new wood up to the same colour as the old wood and then bring it back up to a lovely polished finish.  I have to admit that the whole time I  was fixing the fabric (the suede side of leather) to the back I was terrified the wood would split again.  It is now in a bedroom where it can be admired but not over used.  The client is a happy lady as the chair belonged to her mother and is very old.

Recovering Louis style chairs

I suppose it shouldn't come as any surprise that when money is tight, spending money on reupholstering chairs comes low on the list of priorities.  I am lucky that we still have work coming in at all, albeit slowly, and was thrilled to be asked just last week to give a quote for a new client.  Time will tell if it turns into concrete work or not.In the meantime I have just finished recovering two Louis chairs for a client. 

I don't usually accept work that is simply recovering as more often than not there is work to be done on the upholstery that can only be seen once the top fabric is off and the true condition of the chair can be seen.   This time though I did because the chairs had been well reupholstered a few years ago and there was no obvious sign of loose joints. 

Sure enough, all was well and the result is, to my eye, very pleasing.

And how lucky that the Virginia Creeper just happens to be turning to autumn colours when I need a backdrop!

Finished and started...

A big chair but a real joy to work on.  Very fiddly though so an equal joy to finish!

And now for something completely different...

A small bedroom chair belonging to a friend of mine.  The back was completely broken and my wonderful local carpenter has remade a section of it and then put it all back together. 
Don't look at the mess behind!

I have been working ... really!

I have finally finished these two chairs and both have now been delivered back to the client.  The first was given to me over a year ago and then there was a delay while the owner chose the fabric.  And then another delay as they weren't quite sure.  Then another as they'd forgotten the measurements, twice.  Anyway, umpteen delays and finally the fabric was sent to me at the beginning of 2009!

I was worried when I saw the spotted fabric (from Toile de Mayenne) on the roll that it wouldn't work with these old French chairs - especially as originally the back was also going to be spotty.  But I like the effect on the finished piece.  I only wish I had a photo of the two side by side but they were given to me separately as the client didn't want to go without both chairs at once!

 

Incidentally, if you ever buy fabric from Toile de Mayenne do check it before you cut (you should always do so anyway).  I have NEVER received the right quantity of fabric from them first time - even 10 cms less than asked for (and PAID FOR!) can make a difference between enough and too little.  But their fabric is lovely.

 

UPHOLSTERY COURSE STARTING 23 FEBRUARY 2009

I have been asked to do a course starting on Monday 23 February for five days.  I still have places available and if you are interested please post a comment - I will get straight back to you!

Accommodation and meals are available.
 

Work is interfering with knitting! Hurray!

It  doesn't take much thought to work out that when times are hard chairs don't need to be reupholstered.  Anyway, that old armchair in the corner is so comfy why would anyone want to have it reupholstered - just throw an old rug over it to hide the worn patches and the nail varnish (note to self:  ban everyone from applying nail varnish on upholstered furniture).

As a result my work load has gone down a bit - actually it's all but disappeared.  You might have noticed that I've clearly got a bit (!) of time at the moment to knit and spin.  Socks are being produced at a rapid rate.  Bearing in mind that I'd never considered knitting socks until late last year, you might think I'm a bit of a fanatic.  Well, why deny it?  I'm having enormous fun buying unusual wool, usually off ebay, and then wearing the resulting socks a few days later.  It's also a way to keep warm - I can sit next to the fire in the kitchen which during the freezing cold spell a couple of weeks ago was the only place to be in this house unless you actually want to have a violet/blue complexion.

So although I complained ALL last year about one client who kept changing his mind (and her mind - it's a husband and wife decision) about the choice of fabric;  who asked FOUR TIMES for the measurements and then asked why they kept changing (because his current fabric idea had a pattern etc), I have to admit that I am now equally peeved because he has finally delivered the fabric and I no longer have an excuse not to get on with the chair.  In other words...I CAN'T KNIT!

The good news in all this pathetic drivvle is that the chair is not complicated and is proving quite quick to work on.  The bad news is that the client bought the fabric but didn't remember (or couldn't make up his mind perhaps) to buy the braid that I will need to finish it with.  For some reason people think that this can be done by me quite easily but when you are buying 10 metres of braid for a minimum price of 10euros/metre it seems to me that I could quite easily have a complaint on my hands further down the line - when I present the bill for example!

I mustn't complain though (really?!).  There is a second, matching, chair to come from the same client and he has ALREADY BOUGHT THE FABRIC - although not the braid - and any work that comes in at the moment is good news.  Also, it's warmed up so much that who would want to be sitting by the fire knitting?  (Er, do I have to answer that?)

In the meantime feast your eyes on my latest homespun wool:

 

AND:  Look what the broody chicken suddenly produced:

I think he should be called Ranulph (after Ranulph Fiennes, Arctic Explorer) as he has survived the Arctic temperatures - indeed he was born in them!

My Guilty Conscience and the rather dull story of a workhorse.

I have been neglecting my blogs recently and feel bad about this.  Silly really as it's conceited to imagine that anyone else might have noticed; but I have received a couple of emails/messages recently which has upped my conceit considerably!  It's always nice to be noticed and even nicer to be complimented! 

Not a lot has been going on here but I have been incredibly busy.  I wish I could say I have been over-run with work but needless to say this is not the case.   I have a sneeky feeling that when money is tight the roof tends to take precedence over the old chair in the corner that is probably ok for another couple of years anyway.  All the same I do have a couple of chairs awaiting clients' fabric and six cushions which are all but finished.

These cushions have been giving me nightmares all week.  The client had bought about six metres of fabric, I think in a sale as it wasn't on a roll, and wanted six boxed cushions, piped and zipped, for her dining room chairs.  Normally six metres would be more than enough but this fabric has a stripe pattern in both directions.  She told me she didn't mind at all if they didn't match but I knew if there was any chance at all the stripes WOULD match, thank you very much!  Let's face it - her friends will see these cushions and they might need some work done;  so yes, I'd sort out the stripes!

However, the only solution was to cut out all the pieces and then cut out the piping (again, this had to be cut along a stripe rather than on the diagonal as the latter would have looked dreadful).  Normally, I cut out and make up one cushion to check the fit and anything I might have overlooked but this time I didn't have that luxury and there was no room for error.

So on Wednesday of last week I cut it all out having triple checked my measurements.  Then I cut out the 22 metres required for the piping.  Then my machine died on me.  Oh ****!  Not a good moment!  I had made up just enough piping for one cushion when I realised the strange noise was indeed coming from the machine and not the radio.  I took it straight in to the shoe repair man - who just happens to be the local contact for the sewing machine repair man - and he reassured me he would get it fixed and I would have it back in no time...after Christmas AAAAAAGH! 

I borrowed a machine from a friend and realised just how personal a sewing machine is when I broke her zipper foot.  My machine is 27 years old and I consider it a workhorse.  I was given it when I got married and it hasn't stopped since - well, until last week anyway!  It weighs a ton but there is nothing it won't do despite being a domestic machine.  The one I borrowed was a very good Singer but they don't make them like they used to do they?!  Plastic casing, motor not designed to deal with several layers of medium weight fabric.  Mine's a Frister Rossman 66;  if you see one in a car boot, grab it!

Oh well, my wonderful husband glued the foot together and I gave up with the machine.  Instead, I spent the week hand tacking the cushions.  Normally I machine the piping in place and then tack the box strip to the top and bottom if you see what I mean.  I would also normally do two cushions at a time - tack, machine and finish two and then do two more.  This time I had to tack all six which was pretty damn dull and put me in an increasing bad humour.

Then on Wednesday Christmas came (and went!) early.  Mr Shoe Repair man called to say that his man had fixed my machine and it was working like a dream.  Whilst I tacked cushion number six wonderful husband went and collected the workhorse and bougth it back to me just as I was ready to stitch the cushions.  And yes, it works a dream.  The strange noise has gone.  The forward motion is very smooth.  The motor is quiet.  The tension is sorted.  It seems I was using a workhorse with a limp before! 

So it's all over bar the ties and the delivery to, hopefully, a happy customer.  I won't tell her the story behind her cushions. I just hope she notices that the stripes all match up!

Photo to follow...

Recaning chairs

You may recall that a few months ago I did a caning course with the wonderful Denis Guerin, chair genius of western France (seriously, if you want to learn to cane or to do rushwork his workshop is the place to go).  Since then I''ve been quite busy with upholstery work and then of course the summer took over big time so caning was rather put on the back burner.  I wasn't worried - it's like riding a bicycle and once learnt you might wobble a bit but you won't forget it.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Angers and as I had an hour to spare called in at the Depot Vente where people bring their old "stuff" and hope it will sell.  The DV takes a percentage of any sale and I suppose disposes of stuff that doesn't sell.  Usually it's full of total rubbish combined with some half way decent stuff and just occasionally an armchair which an estate agent would describe as having potential.  This time though I was looking for chairs that needed recaning and finally, after 30 minutes of searching, I found them stacked so high at the top of some shelves that the very kind girl had to climb to the top of a ladder to get them down - with no guarantee that I would buy them!  (Incidentally, I laughed as the ladder was definitely not conforming to any Elf and Safety Regs and she wouldn't even let me hold it for her to keep it steady.  I suppose she would have grabbed the stack of shelves if the worst had happened but then there would have been a wonderful domino effect!)

In the end I did buy some, a set of four and a set of two, all in need of recaning.  And the really good news?  All six together cost me a grand total of 30 euros!  Not bad I think.

Caning really is not rocket science but it is very time consuming.  A basic seat should take about 7 hours work.  My first two each took me ten hours but I think I will get quicker as my fingers get used to the work.  A third one is also finished and the fourth one will be done today.  My wonderful husband has been in charge of re-glueing the chair frames which are now as solid as an ox. 

The final two chairs will require a lot more of his time as the frames themselves have split.  This is very common with caned seats - the pull of the cane together with the weight of the people sitting on it will gradually weaken the wood which eventually comes away.  It is not difficult to repair - again, if you do a course with Denis he will show you exactly what to do and how to do it.

I will post pictures of all six chairs when they are finished.  In the meantime, here are the first two.

Back to work with a headache

Well actually I have been working during the summer but only when I have time between visitors, tennis, oh and family!  But now I have no excuses.  Visitors are finished for a while, the youngest is back at school and the two older ones are off to university at the end of this week.  The house is quiet - although the washing machine seems to be going flat out.

Anyway, back to work proper.  Before the holidays a friend asked me to change the fabric on her three Louis style chairs.  Changing fabric is always a tricky one as you don't know what's underneath until you open it up and by then it's too late!  Still, she's a good friend and recently gave us ten chickens (they are chicken farmers) to replace some that were eaten by goodness knows what, so it seems reasonable to change the fabric on her chairs!

Quite apart from the potential problem of tired, worn out upholstery under the cover, there is the problem of all those upholstery finishing nails - the pretty ones around the edges, ha ha!  Obviously they are all the same size and inevitably they end up going back in where the old one came out - which is fine if you can fill the holes with something (see below).  When I strip a chair down to its bare wood I can do this easily but when there's old, dusty upholstery still there it's a bit more complicated!

Getting the old ones out is a long slog.  Often enough the tops fly off and I end up having to remove the stem with some rather handy bent pliers that I keep in the workshop.  But the reward does come once it has all been replaced.  The nails really do finish off this style of chair better than any passementerie can.

I delivered the first chair (above) on Saturday evening when this lovely friend invited us to dinner.  It turned into a slightly embarassing evening.  I'd played a tennis match in the afternoon and thanks to my total idiocy lost the match (I was leading 5/2 in the third set and then lost the tie-break - durrrr!).  It was quite a long match and as a result of the afternoon I was a) hacked off and b) tired.  As we set off for dinner, chair in the back of the van, my head started pounding.  I took a paracetemol and carried on.  It got worse.  We carried the chair into her sitting room and she was thrilled so something to cheer me up anyway!

Unfortunately the head didn't go away.  I really tried hard to make conversation and even managed to eat something but it just wasn't going to happen so in the end I did the only sensible thing - I went and lay down on the sofa and clutching my head and an adorable 8-week old puppy, fell asleep.  Apparently I was there for two hours when Max finally woke me up and took me home - head still pounding.  The next morning I woke up feeling battered and bruised and with a fragile head but not the pain.

I don't drink very much when we go out in the evening  because that way Max can enjoy his wine and I can drive home;  so it seems doubly unfair that after not having drunk ANYTHING for more than 48 hours I am the one who wakes up with a sore head!

The head thankfully seems to have recovered and is still attached to my shoulders so back to work today to start on chair number two!  Hope you like them.

A NOTE ON REFILLING HOLES:  There are plenty of products on the market for refilling wood but they are expensive and not brilliant if you have to hammer upholstery tacks and/or nails back in.  I use a mixture of fine sawdust, which I sieve to get the big bits out, mixed with an ordinary white wood glue.  I can't give you exact quantities as I do it by sight and feel but basically you are looking for a mixture that resembles tuna fish mayonnaise.  If it's too thick it won't stick and if it's too wet it won't fill the hole.  You'll soon get the idea!  Don't make too much at a time as it does go off quite quickly. 
If you have some left over use it on another piece of furniture.