Lawn chair, lawn chair, chairs, armchair

I finished the first lawn chair, with a pause of a day to grow some more muscle for pushing the awl and for driving screws through fabric that constantly wanted to twist.

There was some fiddly work that went into each connection.  I'd looked through our hardware hoard, and I have a few T-shaped pins from a retired lawn chair, with the "T" being as wide as a strip of webbing, which is wrapped around it, and then the short stem of the "T" is inserted through the webbing and into the chair frame, and holds the webbing in place while spreading out the strain and neatening the ends.

For a similar effect, I used a strip of milk jug plastic for the wide part of the "T", and a screw, with a washer, through it for the stem.  I think the plastic will not hold up that well in the longer term, but it's good enough for now, and I could be wrong since the fabric will protect it from the sun a lot and my lawn chairs are in the shade for most of the day.

With the second chair, the connectors were short bolts that ran through grommets in the ends of the webbing--which were carefully folded into points.  My fabric wouldn't fold down that far, so I did basically the same thing as the first chair, but I saved the grommets and re-used them as washers.

Most of the assembly happened outdoors, and the work for the second chair was spread over three days; it had more bands than the first chair.

The finished lawn chairs have been holding up so far.  They look nice, except for the one chair's arms still being deteriorating plastic.  Which I will probably replace with wood at some point.

I have three other chair projects, and a table project, lined up indoors.  One of them is a tapestry armchair a child bought at a yard sale, which needs major repairs on the springs.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

New diaper covers

Recently I retired some of our cloth diaper covers, the last of the ones that we bought for our first baby.  I had been extending them for the last baby, who had outgrown them, by pinning them on with the diapers, but the baby started escaping from them regularly.

To replace the diaper covers, I made several new ones:  two layers of fabric with a layer of plastic enclosed in between. For a pattern, I traced around a secondhand pocket diaper that we use as a diaper cover.  It has no elastic around the leg openings, yet it manages to achieve a decent level of containment.  

For plastic, I used ironed-together chip bags for one, and stole my bulk rice bag sewing machine cover for the other.  The rice is both tougher and more flexible.

The sewing procedure is very similar to making prefold cloth diapers, which for some reason I can't find any decent directions for, so:  take the fabric for one side, sew the innards to it on the "wrong" side, then add the fabric for the other side with the "right sides" together and sew around the edges--but leave a gap so you can turn it right side out, and then once it is turned, sew the gap closed. For diapers, I also topstitch around the edges to keep them from inverting in the wash.

For closures, I experimented with using elastic ponytail holders and large (coat) buttons, sewing on the elastics where the tension would keep the loops secure on the buttons.

In practice, this works fairly well, although it would be better to have two elastics per side, so that the back edge doesn't pivot outward and make a gap around the leg.  The buttons I used are large enough that no additional buttons are needed for this.

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Then I made a new cover for my sewing machine, using a nice fabric remnant that was handed down to me, that was too small for a pillow cover.

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I took some water bottles that were getting in the way, filled them with water and two drops of chlorine bleach each, and put them aside for use in emergencies and outings.

Buying chlorine bleach at the grocery store was annoying.  New versions have been introduced since the last time I bought any, in the Pre-Covidian Era.  Now there are fabric-preservatives and new scents added to most of them.

I also use bleach to turn black cotton clothing into brown cotton clothing, socks in particular.  The key is to use very little bleach in sufficient water, and to rinse thoroughly right afterward.

Mending and melding

I finally took a stab at my mending pile, and was able to adequately repair several items of clothing, one of which required serious darning/re-weaving where a button's stitching had ripped right out.

One of the things I did a while ago, and then forgot about, was to overdye a skirt and shirt in the washer.  The skirt had colors that were too bright, and the shirt was much too pale.  The skirt came out very nicely, and the shirt came out in a dull but tolerable shade.

I did a quick experiment with cutting a milk jug into narrow strips and then crocheting them.  Crochet uses up length very quickly, and it was difficult to cut very much of it because the scissors I was using tended to slide on the plastic.

Then I messed around with ironing the result, in between sheets of kitchen parchment paper. The plastic fused in some places and not in others.

I also tried ironing flat pieces of milk jug together to fuse them, again using parchment paper to protect the iron and working surface.  This worked, but since the plastic shrinks a bit when heated, you can't butt two edges together and expect them to stay there.  It also doesn't come out entirely flat.

At the playground, I found some stringy dead weeds that could probably be made into a rustic basket, if one reliably had their hands free for working.

I counted diapers going into the washer, and indeed as described in The Tightwad Gazette, twenty diapers equals one load of diaper laundry.  Cloth wipes are included in that, and really it is twenty diaperings rather than diapers, because I am putting a newborn-size diaper inside a larger-baby diaper at each diaper change.

And onward

I made a simple cover/sheath for a meat cleaver, from a piece of suede and some waxed thread.  The thread is extra-heavy-duty, and there was no particular need for a strong seam, so I made very large (one inch) stitches, and the sewing went very quickly:  place leather on an old phone book, poke hole with awl, make stitch, repeat.  I used my last glover's needle for the sewing, but an embroidery needle would have worked fine.

I also took up my quilt project from more than a year ago.  The quilt just needed a few more blocks made, and then to be assembled.  The last step is sewing down the edge binding by hand, and that is half done now.

My most-used quilt was waiting for a replacement back, when I looked at the cotton batting that was hanging out of it, and realized that it would need new innards as well.  The top needs more repairs besides the ones I did a few years ago, but it is worth re-using.

I read about a woman making sleeping bags for the homeless from ironed-together chip bags, and old coats, and I thought of doing something similar for making diaper covers for cloth diapers.  Then I found a laminated woven plastic rice bag that I had saved, which is much sturdier than the chip bags I ironed, and I used that instead.  I encased it in fabric in about the right shape, and added snaps. It came out looking good, but it is very much too small in the waist, so I will have to add extensions.  I hang diaper covers up to dry after washing them, so I'm not worried that the plastic might melt in the dryer.

Other things I have used the rice bags for:  wet bags for the diaper bag and for swimming stuff, and a sewing machine cover.

A child and I watched a YouTube video of a guy attempting to make bulletproof armor from milk jugs.  He had a laborious process involving cutting the plastic up with scissors, shredding it in a blender, baking it in a pan in the oven, and taking it out frequently to try to knead it smooth.  Even then, he had air pockets in his block of plastic, and it certainly wasn't bulletproof when he tested it.  From our one experiment here last year, we found that an iron generates sufficient heat to laminate flat pieces of milk jug plastic together, one layer at a time.  That was a small piece, though, and I don't know how hard it would be to keep a larger one flat as it is built up.

Place-making

A neighbor was giving away some pieces of furniture, and gave us a small table.  I cleaned out a neglected corner of the laundry room, and made a quiet little place to sit and work on something. There were also two small shelves that were claimed by family members.

A child was working on making a face shield for sledding, and decided to use the side of a 2-liter bottle.  Since it was curved, the child decided to iron it under a piece of kitchen parchment paper..  Turns out that what this plastic does when heated is to immediately shrink and make large, smooth blisters.  But this worked out in the child's favor, because three of the blisters were placed just right for the eyes and nose of a pair of goggles.  Child went on to build a full face mask off of that.

Later on I did my own experiment with another cut-up 2-liter bottle.  What came out was a smoothly pebbled (with bumps up to about 2 inches across) otherwise flat surface that is about five inches by seven.  It looks very nice, but it would take a lot of bottles to cover a surface of any size.

I also did an experiment into making flatbread.  Cooking it on the griddle and in the oven had very similar results, except that the griddle was better for browning it.

We bought a drill press

It came with a homemade four-drawer cabinet that fits around the base.

For projects, I used our laminator to laminate some patterned fabric to make shelf liners.  They turned out well, and I would like to make a few more for some drawers.

The friend who gave me the sewing machine found the manual and the attachments for it. There was one I hadn't heard of before, a "scissors guide" that fits onto one blade of a pair of scissors, to help in cutting narrow strips of fabric.  

Mini chandelier mobile

Messing around with plastics a little. For the hangy bits of this project, I made hot glue teardrop shapes on a sheet of aluminum foil, and then tore away the foil around the edges when the glue was cool. 

I used an entire long glue stick, so I had many extras and could choose the best ones.

The circular rim of a plastic food container became the structure.  I sewed the teardrops onto it with "invisible" plastic sewing thread, which is annoying to work with--springy and hard to see. I didn't have any trouble pushing the needle through the glue, and none of my needle holes ripped out.

I also used the invisible thread to hang the mobile.  I ran up four threads, got them more or less evenly tensioned, and then spun the rim to twist them together for a length, which I knotted.

It turned out there was already a handy nail for hanging things above the planned kitchen sink location, so installation went quickly, with the addition of some more invisible thread. 

I thought of coating the backs of the teardrops with hot glue as I was sewing them on.  There are color variations as some of the glue I used was old and yellowed.  It was fiddly keeping the sewing tension loose enough for the teardrops to hang straight.

I only did one round, but others could be added.

Milk jug experiment

We did a further experiment with laminating flat bits of plastic milk jugs (#2 HDPE), and ended up with a strong, flat little chunk of plastic.  It's four layers thick, two inches long, and barely bends when I try to flex it. The translucent jug plastic turns transparent when it is very hot.

It made sense to build it up by adding one new layer at a time, instead of doing them all at once, partly because the pieces were small and tended to slide around, and partly so that the center would be heated enough to fuse well.

Plastic bag experiments

A library book called Ecocraft had a project with laminating plastic shopping bags together to make a stronger and more durable material.  My apprentices and I tried it out, and were able to make an improvement or two beyond the procedure in the book.

The basic idea is to place four to eight pieces of shopping bag between two pieces of kitchen parchment paper, and then iron them with a medium-hot iron, first on one side, let cool, then flip over and iron the other side.

The author recommended using clothespins to keep the layers from shifting, but we found that the plastic shrinks a lot as it is heated.  So if the edges can't pull in as it shrinks, then the center will pull outward, and make holes in the middle.

One child also found that the loose edges could be folded over and ironed down, making the perimeter both neater and stronger.

If you let it cool down for a minute after ironing, the parchment paper and plastic will pop apart on their own.

The process gives off a few fumes, but not bad, at least not for humans.  Just crack open a couple windows.  I've been told that birds are very susceptible to this kind of household air pollution, though.

Shopping bags from mall stores seem to work best (#4 LDPE), followed by the better big-box stores, and then the super-thin discount and grocery store bags (#2 HDPE). 

The resulting laminates are flexible and seem tough.  The children called them "plastic leather", and the laminates made from tan grocery bags do look a lot like leather.  Pinching and pulling on one, it stretches only very slightly until I pull very hard.  I don't know about their abrasion resistance yet.  A needle goes through it very easily.