New Life comes with New Threads

 
While home visiting the family in the flat lands of Southwest Georgia over Thanksgiving, I acquired a little piece of family history. You see my Great Aunt has recently decided to throw caution to the wind and leave single living behind her and move into a retirement community. She paired down her belongings and now resides in a cute little apartment… complete with wifi and Skype! She enjoys the trips and events the community has for them there and seems to be making new friends!

As for the piece of family history… I brought back a little rocker that I remember being in my Great-grandmothers house when I was little. My sister said that Aunt B didn’t have room for it and my sister couldn’t bear the thought of it being thrown away… so she brought it to her house… it was sitting in the middle of her living room and in bad need of a new covering and I offered to take it off my sisters hands and give it a home in my guest room. So we loaded it in the back of the truck and headed north. 

It took some time to get to work on the chair, with Christmas then New Years, then fabric selection/purchase, then snow, then schedule changes, then … you get the idea… I had some
prep-work to do on the chair prior to the re-covering project. I cleaned the years of grime and dirt off and used some scratch cover on the wood parts. it looked great just after a good cleaning!

Well then I was ready for my friend (who is an EXPERT furniture re-finisher) to come over and help with the project … In full disclosure, she did 90% of the work… I watched and used the staple gun! She removed the old pink striped material and showed me how to use it as a pattern to cut the new fabric. We cut the notches the same as the old fabric to make sure ours would fit the same. It went very quickly, the top corners where the only ones that caused trouble. But she got them to lay down nicely and we finished in no time!

 

 

 

 

 

Before                            and                           After

Mom says that this little rocker is over 100 years old, my Great-grandmother got it when she got married in 1911. I’m glad that my sister hung on to this piece of our history! It looks great in our guest room and with it’s new threads, will be around for many years to come!