Several 'Firsts'

The new/old singer had a workout this afternoon completing the prototype kitchen chair cushion.  I found three suitable pieces of cotton for the back portion of the cushions - all uniquely tie dyed by Anne when she was doing her Indigo dye class in Washington DC two years ago.

1. I had never sewn a zip into anything before, and this called for a zip in the back to make the assembly easy and make the 'stuffing' easy.  As it turned out, with the help of the original manual for the machine, this wasn't a problem.

2. The next effort was putting the stuffing into the cushion liner - I had foam, but also used (finally) some of the Clun Forest we had been saving as left over from making batts - washed and too good to throw away.  Appropriately we had a bag labelled 'stuffing' as we imagined we would make pillows/cushions out of it one day.  So once the foam had an appropriate coating of wool it was sewn into a cotton cover ready to put inside the cushion.

The rest of the machine sewing was mainly just ensuring that it was done in the right order (and around the right way), with the final assembly including some wool three strand plaited cords to tie the cushion to the chairs.

The prototype ready to sit on

The indigo dyed back, with zipper and ties.

3. As a first for the Singer sewing machine, it did pretty well.  I have to remember that it is very manual and adjustments have to be made with tension all the time for different material thicknesses, but I have now got the hang of starting it easily, and with more use will get some straighter seams!  I will now contine to practice on the two others, so that when I weave the actual kitchen cushion cover material, which is now looking like it will be shades of green, I can do it with ease (and a little bit more neatly).