Peggy Creates: From Old To New

My mum has just been up for her winter get away.

Last year while mum was here she come in to the shop to help Bev & I cover a chair each. We thought we done a great job and were very pleased with ourselves.

This year Mum arrived with a old chair that my uncle gave me. The chair came from my great Grandmother

(Mums grandmother).The chair would be well over 100 years old.Greatgran made the chair. There are 3 chairs in the family. Mum has one, Aunty Mary has one. Aunty Mary's chair is a 2 seater. Both have been coved by mum or with help from mum. Great Gran also made some other furniture.

It took us a week to recover this chair. Once we started to pull it apart it was surprise after surprise. It had 3 different covers. The original one was a patch work job. Hard to belive that one little lady on her own did all this work, and without the tools we have to day. Strong & determined woman in those days.

The packing or padding was bits of everything - feathers, wool, old shirts and singlets, towels, hessian bags. And the string Great Gran had used, it was so strong we had to cut the whole lot to be able to do anthing.

The wooden frame was mostly packing boxes with odd sized and shaped bits of boards here and there. It had wonderful strong legs , as well as wheels. Mum and I were amazed with the nails and tacks. I have never seen tacks with such big heads on them.

Mum and I had a wonderful time pulling layer after layer away. Lots of oh's and ah's.

putting it all back together was a big job. Two of the springs in the seat had broken, so we had to replace them. It was lucky that the upholstery man in town had a couple of spares poked away in the back of his shed.

This chair was contructed in such a different way to the chairs previously done by mum - we had to do it all backwards. Had to start with the seat and then do the arms and then do the back last. We also didnt get the same shape that Great Gran had. We did the best we could, with the materials we had.

Great Gran had a really nice shape to the arms and head rest. She had built them out a bit, bulged the head rest and arms for that rounded plump look. Unfortunately we didnt have the material or knowledge to do that.

But all in all we were both very pleased with how it turned out. Think we did pretty good.

Mum and I think it looks lovely, and i think she would be happy with what we have done with it. Plus I believe Uncle Brian will be pleased with it. And that it has ended up with another member of the family (and we think its pretty neat.)

I wonder if years down the track that one of my great grankids will do the same thing and have just as much fun ripping it to bits and putting it back together.

As we pulled the chair apart this is what we found