This Months Interesting Projects

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This month’s interesting projects have included making for a designer’s personal use a small sofa upholstered in nettle fabric. Don’t worry it doesn’t sting, it is made from 25% nettle fibre & 75% wool. It is supplied by Camira fabrics in their second nature collection. It should also wear very well with a rub test of 50,000 cycles.

That was followed by a customer asking us to make a traditional sprung cushion, as her original one had started to feel uncomfortable after 40 years use!. To do this we bent the steel rod around her existing cushion shape before covering the frame in wire mesh to make the top side. This process was then repeated for the underside. We then hand stitched the coil springs to the mesh section, taking care to space the springs evenly, before turning it over and duplicating the process to the other end of the spring. Hessian was then sewn in place over the framework, and then horse hair applied to the top & bottom area’s. This was then wrapped in wool flock including the edges. A new piped cushion case was then made to finish the job. ( remember that if the cushion is wider at the front the zip at the rear will have to continue along the sides of the cushion, as the new inner cannot be bent or folded like a  foam cushion)

We have also recived an order for a sofa to be made with removable arms & back & seat, making four sections in total. It is to fit through a hatch in the roof for a teenagers relaxation room. Now making removable arms is easy but a bit more thought has had to go into the back & seat request. Having thought it through we drew a frame plan to scale, and happy it will fit through the hatch and result in the correct finished size sofa, We can move onto constructing the frame.

Drop End Sofa Re-Built

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Making our ecosofas is relatively easy compared to re upholstering this drop end victorian sofa.

To say the frame was wobbly would be an understatement, the arm was completely detached from the rest of the sofa, and that nearly fell apart as the old cover was being removed. Slowly the transformation took place using horse hair, layered flock, coir fibre, latex rubber and wool and now it is back to how it was originally over 100yrs ago. Remember this was how all upholstery was made in those days, a far cry from the modern methods used by the majority of upholstery companies today, and how long will a sofa built today last? Our customer has just been and inspected it and was delighted, so delighted she dosn’t want anyone to sit on it .(rather defeats the object of having it restored) Just about to start on our next new ecosofa with removable arms for easy access.

Customer Travels Over 100 Miles for Non-Foam Cushions

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The other day I received an e-mail followed by a telephone call from a lady who wanted to replace the foam paddings in her child’s nursery chair cushions with natural fillings. weare using a combination of wool, hair, latex to give different densities and made new cases in 100% malabar cotton.These days people are very concious of chemicals used in modern foams and also the backcoating on fabrics. The fact that they might cause irritation and breathing problems is a concern, you certainly wouldn’t want to lick the back of a piece of fabric that has had chemical treatment on it. And the foam and backcoating is not bio -degradable. Having just sat on the chair I can vouch for its comfort.