Sun Room Settee Gets a New Seat

 This lovely settee brings to mind porches in summer and sipping iced tea.  Or maybe a sun room and lemonade! Unfortunately years of sitting on it had weakened the wicker seat.  It was still together, but one by one the strands were breaking so it was only a matter of time until someone sat on it and fell through.   It was brought to us as a preventative measure, so that no guests would have to suffer the embarrassment of breaking their hostess's furniture!

 We came up with a simple solution which would not require a complete re-weaving of the seat (which would have been cost preventative and very time consuming).   Instead of re weaving,  we created a hoop in the same shape as the seat itself.  Onto this hoop supports were fastened across in key areas, and then our sturdiest cane was used to weave a grid.  This hoop was then 'sewn' to the settee's original seat frame.

In the photo below you can see the grid we wove, and the original spiral patterned wicker still underneath.   Pretty neat solution right?  The owner of the settee has a cushion which sits on top, so the grid will be hidden.  This cushion was what allowed us to add structural support to the seat, without having to follow  the original weaving style.

Do you have a unique furniture problem that you need help finding a solution to?  Bring it to us, we would love to help!

Hand Woven Radio Weave

In my last post, I told you about the challenges we had with a radio weave/box weave on a machine caned chair.  Interestingly enough,  we are doing another radio weave/box weave, in the same week!  It is not a particularly common pattern, so this is pretty neat.  Of course, it couldn't be just an ordinary box weave,  it is a box weave on a rattan frame, instead of a normal caned seat frame which has holes drilled into it to weave the fibers through.

This means that each strand has to be wrapped around the frame and twisted around a tiny hidden nail to secure it in place.  And the strands at the top  have to be threaded between the two rattan poles and then wrapped around the nail which is even more tricky.  

One of the things that makes hand caning so interesting and special is that instead of a perfectly even weave, where each hole is almost the exact same dimensions (as it would be with machine caning),  with a hand weave there is some variegation to the pattern.  This give each individual chair it's own special look.