They are not quite finished, but I took them to the point where I coud try them on to assess them for fit. Those were rather burning questions. Was the back rise high enough to keep my backside properly covered when I sit? Was the front rise too high so that it bagged? Did I get the width of the legs right for comfortable ease? Once the pants were cut, it only took minutes to sew them together to find out the answer.
And the answer is not too badly. For the next pair I there are a few small adjustments, but they fit pretty much as I was hoping they would. I will sew the casing and elastics on today, hem them up and there I go, a decent pair of pj pants. It's a very similar thrill to finishing a sweater. Not quite, it isn't knitted, but pretty darn satisfying.
I do have to do the chair today though. No getting away from it. My regular task chair blew a second wheel yesterday. I could replace the wheels and have done so in the past, but the chair is so far beyond comfortable it isn't worth putting the money into it. I spent $25 on it 30 years ago and it was just worn out. So on to this.
The Chair I am adapting is a basic Henriksdal Chair with a bright sunny yellow plaid like my sofa and chair. I had one of the pair I have, sitting in my livingroom for spinning and the other was in my study in front of my sewing table.
It was a great chair for spinning. Nice straight back, and we shortened it just the tiniest bit so that it fit me better than an average height chair. But the one in the study was a problem.
It didn't swivel or turn and when I am sewing, rolling back and forth to cutting table, to machine, to ironing board, even just turning to reach the drawers with all the sewing notions, was kind of a pain. For 30 years my set up for sewing was that I could turn and the ironing board was right behind me and while I could set the room up to do it here, the chair did not roll. I dreamt of turning the sewing chair into a wheeled chair for a very long time.
In the picture above, you can see the cut off legs and a cross brace, just a 2 x 4 cut to fit to
the span of two legs. Once the brace is attached, I will be mounting some swivel casters
to it and away I go. The caster looks large because it is. The one thing I have found while trying to find a great hardwearing replacement for my little grey chair, was that if at all possible, I wanted giant rubber wheels. They move so easily and won't have the problem that a standard office roller has, ie, filling up with pieces of cut thread and fabric bits. The other big plus is that they will be great on all kinds of flooring. Office chair wheels can be very hard on some types of flooring.
The only real challenge here is that the brace needs to be centered and I have to predrill the holes for the screws nice and straight into the legs of the chair. I am a big fan of power tools, but not so much when used by me. They make me tense. In I have visions of fingers coming off when the blades of a saw are whirring. Cionstruction sites are a bit of a nightmare to be near. Still, I am going to give it a try. Keith did the cuts for me. All I have to do is predrill and drive the screws in.
I build Ikea furniture all the time. Hacking some shouldn't be that much harder.
No comments:
Post a Comment