Make-Over for My Old Dresser

After 10 years of using my grandmother's dresser, I decided to give it a little face lift. I removed all the hardware (which I kept for nostalgic purposes). I lightly sanded the gloss finish off. I painted the dresser with two coats of semi-gloss black paint. The new hardware was purchased from two different stores. For the knobs, I found two unique knobs with a font type from Anthropologie.  The pulls are from Restoration Hardware.

Here are some pictures before the make-over:

Here are the AFTER shots!

IIDA NY- Sustainable Quilt Project- 2010

Last night, I dreamt Heidi Klum was critiquing our quilt design for this year's IIDA NY Quilt Auction..."Is this supposed to be a jewelry store?" she asked in her German accent. Thank God I woke up from that nightmare whereby my teammates were trying to hanging rhinestone studded jewelry from the face of our quilt. 

Once again, GKV and friends have teamed up with IIDA NY to produce a king-sized art-quilt for the Sustainable Quilt Exhibit and Auction sponsored by Dwell Magazine. This year's quilt is more complicated than ever. Although it seems harmonious & effortless, each individual square is carefully crafted with coordinating fabrics to make up a larger square. In the tradition of quilt making, members of our team make individual 9" squared or larger pieces  on their own time, then we collaborate and place pieces together. There are only four members on our team this year, so we have been putting lots of man-hours in for this one!

Above are pieces from my section that I sewed at home. Fabrics are recycled samples from our resource library at GKV. My favorite fabrics are the modern KNOLL samples.

This is the quilt pieced together at 85%. I can't wait to see it completed.

This year's exhibit and auction will be held at OPEN SPACE at 201 Mulberry Street, NYC. Below is a photo of my teammates, Bryan Bennett and Brett Kaplan, at our monthly Haworth workshops.

Kitchen Before & After photos

Ben & I added paint to the very white walls. We applied blue on two sides & black chalkboard paint on the entry wall. I found some vintage marquis letters on ebay. I bought two: one "K" and one "B"...totally forgot about getting an old "C" for Charlie....but I am working on it. We added shelves behind the frig and hung my "Crawfish Festival 2001" poster. 

Upholstery Class #4 of 4: The Final Steps!

ah...yes, we left off at piping!

Once the piping is applied on all four sides, we applied the fabric that covers the sides of the ottoman. We stapled the back side of the fabric, upside-down along the underside of the piping. We overlapped the two edges at one corner.  We left about 2 to 3 inches of overlap on these two corners.

After all the fabric was stapled to the ottoman, we applied a stiffening strip to the underside of the piping... holding very tight to the piping. 

After the stiffening strip (which resembles cardboard or chip board in texture and stiffness), we attached more dacron to all four sides. The dacron should align with top of piping cord. Smooth with right hand, tighten and hold with left hand, then staple with right hand...repeat...on all four sides. 

Place ottoman upside-down for the next finishing steps. Pull fabric upward and use ruler to push dacron down on top of piping seam. Put two temporary staples at the corner where the fabric meets. Staple all four side to underside of ottoman, creating 90 degree angles at corners. The corner, where the fabric meet, is too tough for me to repeat....infact I didn't even do it, which was unlike me...since I was getting used to doing things twice (in this class). I got my teacher to finish that corner for me. 

Cut access material from bottom. Add bottom- we used a thin black material. I forget the name of this stuff...I was excited to have almost completed this sucker.

Add gliders to each corner of the bottom. You can just hammer them into the bottom. I should probably say "you can hammer these gliders into the bottom with skill and experience" since I broke the exposed plastic part of the glider atleast 4 times before getting one into the bottom of the ottoman...successfully.


Sew up edge with an invisible seam. 

Last step & final step: carry home and prop your feet up!

A "Matt Haly" Original Ottoman: Upholstery class 3 of 4

I think my left arm shoulder muscle is going to be more developed than the right from working on this ottoman. My right hand staples while my left arm pulls, stretches and creates tension in all the fabric and supporting fabric. Like I said in an earlier post...Upholstery is hard work!

After completing the burlap corners, we sprayed down the edge roll with the 3M foam fast spray (we used 313 to spray down the cotton batting). see above photo. The photo below illustrates where to spray the 3M foam fast spray. When pushing blue foam onto the glue area (the black line on the wood frame) be sure to push down tightly so that no part of the black line is exposed.

Like most steps in this process, do front, then back, then sides.

Glue is messy! Wash the glue off your hands!

Dacron is the white foam that goes on top of the blue foam that goes on top of the cotton batting. That's a lot of cushion. I mean, we need to be comfortable when sitting on this Ottoman. I think, at this time during class, is about the time that Matt Haly accused me of doing this step wrong and therefore I would end up with a Martha Stewart Ottoman! Some people like Martha's ottomans just fine.

The Dacron needs to be stapled tightly to all four sides just below the black line (that is now concealed by the blue foam). So magically staple your dacron on!

You should end up with little Miss Muffet's tuffet.

Fold corners over into a nice and neat tight edge. 

Next is the fabric layer. Yes we finally made it to the fabric. Staple the fabric using the same steps applied to the dacron layer.  Fold corners neatly cutting access fabric out before crossing one side to the other. Create a line that in directly above edge and where corner is below the actually corner of the ottoman. I think this when I told Matt, our teacher, that I was going to sell my crappy ottoman on Etsy as a "Matt Haly" Original. 

Before piping steps, cut access fabric off. We started with a 24" x24" square.

Piping is fun! Start in the middle of the length of piping & in the front of you ottoman. If you can tell what the front is anymore. Wrap around evenly. You should end up with an even amount on each side. Using a ruler, measure 11-1/2 inches from the base. Thats where the top of your piping should lay. Staple on a diagonal all the way around using longer staples. The ends of the piping are tricky. You must cut the left side of piping on an acute angle, then with the right side of piping, cut access about an inch overlapping the left side. Rip stitching of right side out, and cut right rope on an opposing acute angle so that they marry each other, then fold access fabric over, wrap left side and staple done. Easier said than done, for sure.

to be continued....

Upholstery Class #2 of 4

Photo-documenting the steps of upholstering is probably the best way to document this process, since most of my energy was spent ripping tacks out of the wood frame and tying knots and retying knots! Taking actually notes would have slowed me down. I think a visual journal is better than written words for this very tedious hobby.

In the above photos, you can see one side of the rope where by I looped the rope around the tacks and the opposite side of the frame, where I nailed the rope down. 

When tying the springs down remember to start with the shorter side of the rope. After looping it around the already in placed tacks, loop it around the second row down on the spring (on the side closest to the wood)...I know I am confusing the crap out of you right now...but this is more for me to remember what in the hell I was doing in class! haha. Loop it on every side of each spring, until the end where you nail it in place. If your shorter side is on the left, roll to the right. If the shorter side is on the right, roll to the left.  The longer side of the rope ties the string into place, but instead of starting on the second row down, tie knots on top row of each side of outer springs.

After every spring is in place, the outer springs 3-1/2" high, the center spring 3-7/8" high, cut the remainder of the rope leaving about 4 to 5 inches in lag. Next you will staple on sheets of muslin with loads of tension, as Matt says, "make it taut"...okay. This happens on all four sides. Make sure its taut! Taut: adj, stretched or pulled tight. 

After you staple the muslin onto the sides of the frame. You will place burlap over the top of the springs. Again, taut! For both process of stapling burlap and muslin, you must staple the fabric face down, then fold over the lag, and staple that side along the same row of previously inserted staples. Cut excess fabric.

Next you place this rolled cushioned-burlap stuff (i forget the name), I think Ben texted me at this point! You place this stuff at the edge and staple along the edge (actually it must be flush with the wood). Then glue down that rolled thing, so that there is no gaps. You can use spray glue. I hate spray glue. Push the rolled cushion thing down HARD! 

Then you create clean edges with four square pieces of burlap, Staple, fold, staple, make sure you have a smooth 90 degree line at the corner.

Upholstery Class #1 of 4

I decided to take an upholstery class this summer with hopes of learning how to make a slip cover for my funky couch and throw pillows for my bed. What's this- a staple gun?!?  I had no idea how much muscle would be required when tying down spring coils to the bottom of my "soon-to-be ottoman" wood frame. Last night was my first class at the Furniture Joint at 33 Great Jones, NY, NY with Matthew Haly. 


We began with a square wood frame for an ottoman. After writing our names on the bottom (then me discovering the bottom from the top), we stapled and weaved in the webbing. After stretching the webbing tight with a webbing stretcher (who knew they even had such a specific tool), we spaced the coil evenly apart and hand sewed the coils in tightly  with italian weaving thread (I think thats what Matt called it) and a very VERY large needle. After the spring coils were in place, we nailed in the tacks on the edge and tied the coils down so that they were no more than 3 1/2" above the webbing. This was problematic for me. I wasn't a boy scout, so knots are not that easy for me, nor making the knots so tight that they allowed for maximum tension whereby pushing the coils down to its 3 1/2" position. I need to do more arm weights at the gym apparently. 


The images below show the steps in order of progress.

TO BE CONTINUED....