Catch 22

I am a war veteran and I will courageously go anywhere with confidence. I will go into the store to buy feminine products for the ladies in my life. I will walk around the mall holding purses. There is one place I fear to go alone. The fabric store.

So I had these old chairs that were a family heirloom. Problem is I didn’t want them and no one in my family wanted them. They were old, dingy, and had a horrible old floral pattern. But I couldn’t get rid of them either.

My mom is the expert at reupholstering things. She advised strongly against reupholstering these chairs. She basically said no. They have tufting which is how master furniture makers show off. These had tufting on a curved surface. Really really hard to make.

I wanted to have them redone in velvet. Problem was it would have cost way more to send them off than it would to buy new chairs.

So I said what Bill O’Rielly furiously said on Inside Edition. I’ll do it live! So I had to face my fear of going to the fabric store alone. I wandered around completely out of my element. I had a vague idea of what I was doing seeing my mother do reupholstering. But she said no thank you to this idea.

When a lady approached me and asked if I needed help I said yes! Please help me I have no idea what I was doing. She showed me to the furniture fabric. I dug through the clearance rack. I found 2 yards each of beautiful velvet fabric.

But I needed way more than fabric. I had basically no supplies. So I showed the lady a picture of these chairs and she said she only really did minor reupholstering of like pillows. Basically she said what my mom said. But she brought me to the section that had everything I needed. I gathered all the supplies that looked useful. But I didn’t get scissors because I got scissors at home.

So I went home and got to work. Boy was it a lot of work. I took out easily a thousand tacks and staples. I stripped the two chairs and took the fabric and laid it over my velvet. I took one cut and realized what a dumb dumb I was. The scissors were old and rusty and dull. They left jagged cuts and rust over my beautiful fabric. Unacceptable!

Back to the fabric store. I needed REAL scissors! Here I go again bewildered into the fabric store yet again. I get to the scissors display and boy was that an assault on my eye balls. So many choices. So many ways to ruin it. But I recognized one brand. Fiskars. My mom wanted gardening sheers for her birthday and I remember the guy at Home Depot recommended Fiskars as being a worthy gift for my Mommy.

So I get the Fiskars scissors and some candy and some other gifts to appease my Mom because I was in over my head. So my mom came over poured a glass of wine ate the candy and had that you should have listened to your mother look on her face. I promised her the scissors if she would help me cut the fabric. But she already had a pair of Fiskars scissors. She preferred gloating instead. She gave me some buttons from her kit. She wished me luck but she had no idea how to finish up.

So I went on YouTube and figured out how to do the tufting. About a week later I was almost done but ran out of furniture tacks. So I went back to the fabric store. I had pictures of what I accomplished. I went to show the lady who helped me. Then a man walked in with the same bewildered look I had. His daughter was moving to out and he wanted to reupholster the Family couch for her.

I went through all the things I ended up using and I told him you can’t cheap out on scissors. You need the Fiskars. Not just for the initial cuts but you need a good pair for high tension relief cuts. Then I went on to explain everything to him.

I would love to tell you that the joy of this story was restoring a family heirloom or making my mom the ultimate crafter amazed and proud. The most joy was helping that man feel confident in that space I was terrified of and helping him avoid the mistakes I made.

P.S. I REALLY REALLY want to show you all the pictures I took it was quite the journey. I even have pictures of the gifts I got my mom to try and enlist her aid.