Lawn chair webbing, and other maintenance

I was experimenting this morning with ironing layers of milk jug plastic together--with a layer of baking parchment paper to protect the iron--in the hopes of making a solid enough material for a lawn chair seat.

I gave up after a while.  The plastic bonded poorly, tended to warp and wrinkle, and was rather brittle after it cooled down.

Next idea:  use a big piece of synthetic upholstery fabric to make "giant bias tape"--bands of folded fabric, only with the fabric cut with the grain instead of diagonally as done with real bias tape--and then to use the bands as webbing.

I figured a triple thickness of the fabric would be enough.  I now have the bands cut and the "raw" edges secured with stitching.

The next step, and the hardest one, will be to attach these to the chair frame so that the connectors don't tear out.

----------------------

In other work, I managed to pull off the hot glue that I had used to winterize my bedroom window.  Last summer it was on there very firmly, but a second year of temperature changes weakened the bond a lot.  So now I can open the window.

-----------------------

We've been around to a number of neighborhood yard sales, and we found many useful items, in particular jeans and work pants for teenage boys, and several pairs of shoes that fit me and a child.  I had been in a mall shoe store not long before, where there were practically no acceptable shoes, so it was very timely to find the yard sale shoes.

------------------------

I finally got to a leather store, and bought some utility leather for re-covering indoor chair seats.  I've learned from a previous attempt that fabric store vinyl is much less durable than the original vinyl.  If the leather doesn't survive, I'm going to use steel plate.

Putting the leather on took a while, mostly in trying to wrap it gracefully around the corners, given that the leather was too thick to have more than two layers of it on the underside of the seat.  I used carpet tacks from the home improvement store, which worked fine.

Rather a surprise

 One of the washcloths that I made from an old skirt is now threadbare to the point of developing holes.  What I noticed is that the areas that happened to be embroidered from when it was a skirt are not nearly as threadbare; the fabric density there is about double that of the undecorated portions, not including the embroidery yarn and thread--which were stitched as a yarn embroidery "couched" or stitched down with buttonhole thread.

So the embroidery has done a lot to protect the fabric from abrasion, mostly during washing, and has also helped to contain the fibers so they don't work their way out of the fabric.

Shorts

I used some of the yard sale fabric--a thin cotton throw and a 25-cent flouncy linen skirt--to make a couple of pairs of shorts for myself, to wear under skirts.  I also shortened a pair of pajama pants into shorts.  Partly by hand sewing, partly by machine; hand sewing is much easier to take outside.

I also made a small beginning on the skirt I am planning to make out of cotton T-shirt scraps.  Just two pieces of fabric, backstitched together with a couple of outlined shapes, and then cut out the top layer within the stitching (reverse applique, a la Alabama Chanin).  I need to go back and re-stitch with buttonhole thread, which is much more durable.

Branching out

I set up the big willow basket, found an old smoker lid to turn upside down for a planter inside it, and then I set up a stack of hardwood pieces from old armchair innards as a base for the smoker lid.  I ended up filling it with water toys, and not dirt, though.  

We had a yard sale, and did poorly money-wise, besides my mother-in-law buying two willow wreaths that I had made, and one child running a lemonade stand that did well.  Child charges 25 cents per cup, but many people pay with paper money and say to keep the change.  With the yard sale, the problem was mostly that we didn't have a lot of stuff to draw people in.

We went to a number of yard sales ourselves, and found some useful items.  Children bought fishing equipment and a large vintage crank-driven ice-cream maker.  I bought an oak table, boxes of nails, and some tools.  At free piles we found some fabrics, greeting cards, and books.