Living in a small 450-square-foot studio apartment in Manhattan, I acquired very little in the way of furniture. My queen-size sofa was too big, bulky and costly to ship, rests disassembled and in pieces in a storage unit in New Jersey. So there were very few pieces to ship to Maui.
After getting settled into the house I am renting in Pukalani, I obviously needed furniture. The house is almost 4-1/2 times as big (okay... including the garage) and I had decided that although I wanted to keep with the island style, I didn't want it screaming Polynesian tiki bar. I did want a piece - preferably a chair - made out of elephant bamboo, and as luck would have it I found what I was looking for quite by accident.
My yellow lab (my VW beetle convertible, license plate LAB 838) needed servicing, and I took it to the auto center. Once there, I discovered it was going to take 6 - 8 hours repair, and without alternate transportation, I was obviously going to make a day of it. Luckily the shop was located in an industrial area, and the nearest town, Wailuku, about half a mile away.
So my wanderings to wile away the hours began.
I found myself on a street that was a loop, and I started at one end and anticipated ending where I began, at the repair shop.
The first few buildings were of no importance to me -- storage units, an animal clinic, post office -- but then I saw one building with the sign BAMBOO MAUI. I knew as luck would have it, I was on to something.
The showroom was mainly bamboo flooring and bamboo used for commercial purposes, counter tops and wall coverings mostly; a surfboard, and a few pieces of furniture. The sales rep, who had entered as I was meandering around, told me the furniture was reduced half price as they were eliminating using this space as a showroom, and going forward would be used strictly for warehousing stock (their store in Kahului would have the furniture in the future). I knew I was looking for such a piece as was displayed in front of me, and to end this quickly, I bought the chair and had it delivered.
As it is, I find, with most pieces of furniture, little attention had been given to the cushion covers. I had been amassing heavy-weight fabrics - denim, khaki, linen and ramie remnants which were the bottoms of pant legs cut off to repurpose old trousers into shorts -- and home dec fabrics for such a purpose. I wanted to sew a patchwork of fabric into usable yardage and then make cushion covers from the pieced cloth.
After measuring and calculating the number of triangles -- I had chosen to patch triangles together -- I started cutting. I found that my collected stash was insufficient for the number of triangles needed. So I bought some new fabric.
I then laid a few pieces out and realized I had miscalculated the number of triangles I need by less than half... I had cut approximately 150 pieces, and my reupholstery endeavors required that I have at least 320.
I scrounged... an old bandana backed with interfacing for stability. The sleeves of a shirt -- almost any little useable scrap I could find... and another trip to the fabric store.
Finally I had cut enough triangles. All in all I gathered 29 different patterns of fabric, some of which numbered as many as 21 pieces of a design and as few as 2.
I then laid out the pieces on the floor: top cushion 54 pieces each front and back; bottom cushion 80 pieces front and back with the bottom sides at 14 pieces times 2 and the back at 12 pieces. The piping was made from scrap, pieced together.
So, single triangles were coupled into pairs.
Two strips were sewn together to make a set of 2.
Depending upon the layout -- 1, 2, 6 or 8 strips became a panel. And the panels are pinned to the design board awaiting the next segment in the process of making the cushion covers.
To be continued...
