Continuing Education

My friend Susan (shop currently closed due to pregnancy and stuff) was over for book club and told me about this upholstery class she signed up for. I thought it sounded really fun, and although sometimes the fun things you want don't pan out, this one did.

So now my next eight Tuesday nights will be spent in the abandoned, leaky basement of a local middle school, learning the craft of upholstery. (Negative? No, charming.) We had our first class last week and oh.... I loved it. The teacher is a tailor by trade and he LOOKS like you think a tailor would look -- older, thin, neatly groomed, a short beard. He is completely amazing at what he does and we are going to learn so much.

I wanted to share some pictures I took. Probably a little nerdy of me to be snapping pictures of our surroundings, but at least I tried to be subtle by waiting till the end. Who am I kidding, I am totally geeky. Anyway, there were these awesome old industrial sewing machines there, in good working order:


I almost sewed on this Pfaff, but we ran out of time. I did learn how to change the bobbin, though. At the bottom middle you can sort of see a lever -- interesting tidbit: to lift the presser foot and pull out the fabric, you're supposed to push against the lever with your right knee instead of lifting the one on the back of the machine like normal. Note the band-aid denoting the 1/2" seam allowance mark.


And I thought this poster was pretty neat, in all its retro, taped-on-the-wall, textbook-y glory. That'd be a cool one to frame, with all those chair and couch drawings.


We're all going to make ottomans. I put dibs on the gold velvet fabric that was just laying around, how lucky can you get.