In the Time it Takes to Bake a Sweet Potato (YAM) Souffle

Along with mashed potatoes (for which I'm evidently famous—or infamous?) and chocolate lava cupcakes, I was asked to bring a sweet potato (YAM) soufflé to Thanksgiving dinner with John's family. After I got the ingredients mixed together and popped them into the oven, I set the timer for 35 minutes. I then decided to give my itchy trigger finger some exercise, grabbed the staple gun, and set about reupholstering one of the beautiful mid-century chairs I had purchased from Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore.
As a reminder, this is what it looked like:

And here’s the post I first mentioned it.
Actually, my little adventure began a few days earlier, when I drug the little beauty out to the garage and ravaged it.

My mom turned me onto a product called Restor-A-Finish, made by Howard. She used it--with great success--on my dad's heirloom upright piano, and my aunt used it on it to restore some 1960s era kitchen cabinets. After I striped my chair of her cheap vinyl seat, and set about restoring her luster.

Howard, your ish is da bomb! Who knew the veneer on my little chair was so freaking stunning! Restor-A-Finish brought out the lovely wood tones, the complex swirl patterns of the grain, and made the beautiful, delicate lines of the piece really stand out.

My next task was removing the vinyl from the seat bottom. I've really gotta hand it to the original assembler of this piece; their utter LOVE of metal staples was wholly evident. It literally took me longer to remove the staples than it did to restore it!

I took this opportunity to make sure all the joints were secure by tightening screws and malleting blocks back into place. The chair oughta survive another few decades!

So that brings me back to where I put my lovely sweet potato (YAM) soufflé in the oven. Armed with quilting batting and a staple gun, I set about dressing up my freshly restored chair.

Now, I'm sure there are a myriad of ways to reupholster chairs, ways that are easier and more elegant than what I did, but I'm a novice and naïve and have an over-blown sense of self-confidence, so this is what I did.

First, I used the seat as a template. I rolled out the quilting batting and set the seat on top. Using a fine-tipped permanent marker, I traced the seat onto the batting.

Next, I more or less carefully cut out the batting using standard scissors.

The fabric I decided to use for this application has a very subtle diamond pattern to it. I don't know my fabrics too well, so all I can say is it's like a synthetic velvet and it's pretty and soft. Since the pattern is very subtle, I wasn't too worried about getting the lines straight/making it perfectly symmetrical, so I just placed the wooden seat on top of the wrong side of the fabric, and traced the shape out using the permanent marker again. When I cut it out, I cut about 1" from the line so I would have enough fabric to accommodate the batting and easily staple to the seat. In retrospect, I probably should have cut 3" so I'd have more fabric to grab, but it worked out ok with LOTS of tugging with just the 1".

Here's a shot of the seat, the batting, and the fabric.

Surprisingly, the original batting was still in decent condition, so I decided to reuse it and ignore the icky thought that a myriad of people have farted into the batting over the years. Here you can see the different layers.

I turned everything over, and got ready to staple. Now, if I had been S M R T, I would have thought ahead to put the side of the seat that already had the screw holes in it facing up so when I went to reattach the seat, I didn't have to bore new holes, but I'm clearly not S M R T and forgot to do that. If you try your hand at reupholstering something, be S M R T and make sure you can easily reattach the seat after you're through.

I first stapled all four corners of the fabric to the board, pulling the fabric taut as I stapled. Divide and conquer!

Then I stapled the middle of each side's length, again pulling the fabric taut.

Not a bad start. Here's what the right side looked like.

I continued pulling the fabric, and stapled to my heart's content. And I wanted to be extra certain that the fabric wouldn't rip, so I stapled stapled stapled the corners until I'm sure there's more metal than wood!

Here's what it looked like after I got all the staples in.

As I finished up boring new screw holes into the seat, the timer on the oven went off, and I removed my beautiful sweet potato (YAM) soufflé.And then snapped a shot of my newly restored/reupholstered mid-century side chair!Not too shabby! All in all, I think I spent around $25 on the project ($10 for the chair, $8 for the Restor-A-Finish, and $7 for the fabric/batting...and I have plenty of Restor-A-Finish and fabric/batting left over for other projects, so the real cost of the chair is closer to $15). Here's the Flickr gallery of it with larger photos, if you're interested.

Kraft Paper Laurel Wreath

A confession: I hate Martha Stewart.

I think it's because she's so darned stylish and smart and savvy and seemingly frigid. I hate her perfection. I look at her and her perfect crafts/creations and I am Jack's raging bile duct and I get the unmistakable impulse to "destroy[] something beautiful."

And yet I cannot help but LOVE most everything she does. When I go through the issues of Martha Stewart Living, I say aloud "I hate Martha Stewart" every time I rip out a series of beautifully staged photos and how-tos (John can attest to this). I cursed myself when I was seduced into ordering Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts and I whined each time I placed a sticky note on the pages so I'd remember exactly which projects I wanted to try first, second, third, fourth, fifth......hundredth.

Last year, I saw this wreath project in her magazine, and resolved (!) that I would make one for myself.

While I was fighting off teh pig plague, I made it, with a few notable exceptions:

Folding the strips of Kraft paper accordion-style works ok, but it takes SO much time to do it. So instead, I cut 2-3" strips of craft paper, folded it down the center length-wise, and then cut out the leaves down the length of the strip. It made it fast work, and ensured each leaf would be shaped a little differently from all the others.

I also made some leaves with scalloped edges--I just twisted the scissors slightly as I cut. I suppose I could have used some edger scissors, as well. I just did this so there'd be some variation in the leaves.

I didn't have the fancy schmancy metallic paper, so I took some gold-coloured acrylic craft paint and watered it down a LOT. I then lightly brushed it onto some random leaves I had already cut out. I painted one side and let it dry as I painted more, then I went back and painted the reverse side. I took the same paint and added some red acrylic craft paint to give it a more burnished hue, and painted some more leaves, using the same rotation as before (fronts first, then backs).

Stapling DID not work. It was impossible to staple the leaves to the wireform and have them actually stay on (typically, the staple punctured only one part of the leaf, and it could rip out VERY easily). After trying to staple a few on, I gave up on got the handy glue gun all hot and bothered, and glued the leaves to the frame. This was WAY easier than the stapler, and I think it'll ensure the finished product will survive for many years to come.

I didn't have any pretty satin ribbon, so I used two lengths of 1" grosgrain ribbon in slate blue and sage green. I think the two tones look nice, and the grosgrain gives it a certain earthiness that it wouldn't have with satin.

When it was done, I attached a 3M Command Metal Hook to the inside plate glass window in the foyer, and hunt it there, so it's visible from the street. It matches our Chocolate Lava excellently.

Anyway, here's my finished product:

Click here for more piccies/enlargements of the ones above. And doesn't it look beautiful on my lovurley wool peacoat?