Covering up

About 30 years ago I flew from Vancouver to Toronto to visit my then heavily pregnant friend Krys. She was so heavily pregnant that she could no longer squeeze behind the wheel of her car, so, while I was there, I drove her to a fabric shop out in the burbs. Can’t remember what she was after. I think it might have been curtain material? Yes, her husband could have driven her there before or after the weekend of my visit, but she and I are both fond of fabric shops, so it would be more fun with me. And, of course, as Krys sought out the fabric she wanted I also had a look.

What did I find? Some upholstery fabric which I could use to reupholster (how hard could it be?) Mike’s grandparents’ diarrhoea-yellow chair we’d been give when his parents downsized for a move from their house in Montreal to a condo in Victoria. Turns out it wasn’t that hard and it did look a lot better.

As I wasn’t sure how much fabric would be required, I bought a fair bit. Enough, it turned out, to also recover the diningroom chairs.

Flash forward a couple of decades and I found some brighter fabric I liked more for the chairs.

Although I had no idea what it might be used for, I did fold up the previous fabric from the chairs and put it in the linen cupboard, where I discovered it last summer whilst looking for something else.

The year after Mike died I bought a new sofa to replace the never-particularly-comfortable one we’d had for years. When I did so, a made some cushion covers from an old sheet.

Yes, the fabric went with the couch, but sheet material isn’t really ideal for cushion covers. So, when I found the old upholstery fabric in the linen cupboard, I thought, ‘Hmm, maybe I should make new cushion covers with this.’ When Krys was visiting last summer I asked her what she thought and she immediately said, “Yes!”

I repeat: last summer. This job has been on my To Do list since then. The sewing machine has been out of the closet for months. There have been many days when I’ve said I must do that today. The sewing machine gathered dust.

Yesterday, in the spirit of “just get one bloody thing done”, I finally got the scissors out of my sewing box and put the sewing machine on the table. This job I could have done any day since last summer would have taken an hour from start to finish if my domestic sewing machine had been able to fit the bottom fold into, but it isn’t, so I ended up having to sew the bottom seam by hand. So, two hours all in. Two hours. Any given day. Last summer. Oh, well, it’s done now.

Much better.