The swing

We have had a front porch swing - (I really can't call it a 'porch' swing, because we have no porch, it's more like 'blocking a front window' swing) - going on about 6 or 7 years now. I can remember sitting out on it while waiting for Allan's carpool to kindergarten. He is now 13 1/2. So it has been with us a long time. Over the years of sun and weather it has well, weathered. The material was shredding and fading and looked awful. Really awful. We really didn't even like sitting on it lately. While shopping at JoAnn Fabrics I found outdoor canvas material at 50% off. Still at $10/yard it was a scary buy but I bit and got what was left on the bolt. That was on Tuesday. Saturday morning I got busy. I took off the awning part, or what was left of it, and tried to measure it. Um, yeah, a challange. I brought a folding table and my Singer out in the front and away I went. I just took it one step at a time and actually ended up with a decent finished awning. I had to move my table to the shade. We're still in the 90 degree weather! Crazy! I attached the awning back up and got so excited (and Doug did too) that we decided to go forward with the seat part. Um, yeah, major challange. The backing material is this weird plasticy, webby stuff. After ripping off the remaining material, I slowly measured what little I had left and tried to replicate them. I was dreading the actually sewing because I guessed that my machine would NOT handle the webby backing very well, but with help from Dad and Katie, each pushing or pulling on this huge piece, we got alot of it actually sewn on the machine. While doing the side seams (almost finished), my machine started to spaz and I got frustrated and quit. It was Saturday evening and I was done. This is how far we got. Tonight, Monday, we tried again to do it on my machine only to have it fail again and so I ended up stitching it by hand. Which was okay, because I assumed I would have been doing the WHOLE swing this way, so this last little bit (about an hour long) was fine.
Listening intently to Dougs FHE lesson.

After I was done and our FHE was over, we went outside to hang it up. After lots of bolts, hooks, nuts, washers, we were done. Oh, and with help from Katie and Allan, we were done. Hmm....I wonder who has the camera? And it's a good thing I can delete because she liked taking 'bum' pictures. Hey, Shan - where is Al's bum?
As you can see, Katie was only here for a little bit. Just long enough to pose for a few pictures.

Whoa- where does this piece go? Oh, good job Doug. Two bum shots. A happy ending - No NOT THOSE PICTURES up there -

These pictures:

Oh, as you can see, the 'dotted' material that I originally bought was not quite enough so we had to go and get something to go with it. I think it turned out great. Thanks for all your help Doug.