Tripping Over The Carpet's Edge: The Needlepoint Chair Covers & The Frogs: The Ultimate Recycling

The things that I write about don't require research or fact checks. I do enjoy adding photos to my writing and I write about mundane topics such as silverware, hospital stays, furniture, vacations. and old friends. I write for myself and my son in hopes that someday after I am gone, he will have a good laugh and know me in more detail than he would probably wish for. Several of my stories have been publish in a "magazine" called The Atomic Planet. I don't imagine circulation has reached any further than Callahan, but none the less, I have reached the pinnacle of the publishing world in my thinking.

Dorothy Fleming

In the early seventies while still living at home, my mother, Dorothy Fleming, came up with the idea that she wanted to cover her dining room chairs with needlepoint covers. Each chair was to be a different color and the "theme" would be butterflies. Between the decoupage, the knitting, watching "All In the Family" and "The Bob Newhart" shows, I said, "Sure, Mom. let's do it!" We searched the Lee Ward catalogue and the local shops and came up with six different canvasses to needlepoint..

I worked the butterflies and mother did the backgrounds. Needlepoint tapestries take time and even though we were in it for the long haul, we needed help. We enlisted my Aunt Marian to help. Marian was the equivalent of a needlepoint machine. Because she cared for my Grandmother, she spent most evenings at home and probably toted her needlework to Westinghouse Electric Company where she could stitch before work and during her lunch hour. Knowing my aunt, she probably arrived at work an hour early and waited to punch in with her black coffee and needlepoint in hand.

Years passed, but eventually, my mother's vision was completed and I can remember her standing in her dining room, looking at what we had accomplished. She stood back to take a picture with her small camera and said, "Well. then."

I imagine no other women on earth appreciated these six tapestries more than my Mother and I. They remained the main focus of her dining room décor for over 25 years until she died in 1999. My brother took the vintage Heywood Wakefield Blonde Modern family furniture to his home after we closed down the house after my father died. He and my sister-in-law kept the needlepoint seat covers until recently. I can hardly blame him for finally deciding to recover his dining room chairs. Sometimes I think that he kept the needlepoint chair covers just because of me. I am surprised that they hadn't taken on this reupholstering project sooner. Stuck in the seventies, these tapestries are of value only to me and as I look at them, memories of our needlepoint assembly line come flooding back.

I am in the process of cleaning each tapestry, I have found that forty eight years of two different families sitting on them has changed them. They were never removed and cleaned properly and I should have encouraged this, but who knew? Herman Jackson Dry Cleaners in San Marco used to be the "go-to" place for cleaning and blocking needlepoint. Herman Jackson also did re-weaving of wool clothing. From an online description of the reweaving process I found this: "Reweaving is a specialized skill for repairing holes and tears in damaged garments. It involves hand weaving thread strands into the garment's damaged area, creating virtually invisible repairs. Each worker wears magnifying glasses while working with small needles and thread to reweave the damaged area." I am familiar with the reweaving process because my high school band director demanded this process were you unfortunate enough to put a hole in your band uniform. The end of the year inspection of your uniform was crucial in uncovering uniform damage and off to Herman Jackson you went.

After Mr. Jackson died, the new owners were not as accomplished. Needlepoint was not in their field of expertise and neither was reweaving, I believe I can safely assume that the Herman Jackson Cleaners that still bears Mr. Jackson's name probably sends everything that comes in the door back out the door to another dry cleaning facility. I do know that Herman Jackson held patents on processes of dry cleaning. He was a master. It would have been nice if Mom's tapestries had crossed Herman Jackson's path at some point. Unfortunately, they didn't.

I designed this one

So with that bit of history, I am using the Woolite and cold water method to clean the tapestries. Woolite has never let me down on any "Dry Clean Only" garment. I have found that the chair covers were beyond needing cleaning. I am blocking them with an an old piece of particle board and steel tacks. So far, so good. Don't get me wrong, these seat covers are dirty because they were well loved and hosts to untold numbers of birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and the goings on that they were an unwitting participant in. To me, the dirt left behind in my bathtub after cleaning and soaking the covers probably came from delicious turkey gravy, sauce from a rack of perfectly cooked ribs, icing from a child's hand or blood dripping from my fathers medium rare Sunday night steak dinners. They were sat on to do homework and craft projects that included Elmer's glue. I, for one, played board games on these seat covers and painted pictures while seated on them. I know that ketchup and soy sauce were involved at some point.

As it turned out, there was very little left of the chair covers to use for another chair or footstool. Although they cleaned up quite nicely, at most there was only about a 14 inch square of good, clean undamaged canvas left to work with. Cats fit into the picture at some point.

For years, I have enjoyed my almost "petit point" frog bean bag that has always been a favorite of the many kids who have tossed him round the house. Not yet willing to give up on my needlepoint, I plan to copy him and use what is left of the old covers to make a few frog bean bags.

My Frog

My original frog was completed in 2002. I remember such details because I stitched the year and my initials on it when it was finished. I do that in case an unknowing heir won't think it was made by Chinese slave labor who, by the way, do excellent needlework. The hundreds of thousands of stitches were worked by me over many years and I would like to think it will be enjoyed by a new baby down the line and not by a Goodwill Industries shopper. Several of my mother's chair covers will end up as frogs after I needlepoint eyes on them. Another chair cover will become a clock face and a pattern for a mouse pad. I recently read a Times Union article called "Your Kids Don't Want Your Old Junk". I am hoping that the frogs, knowing where they came from, will be argued over when my house is closed up and my beloved needlework will be in demand. I'm not counting on this, but I can hope. If not, someone at Goodwill will appreciate my handiwork for sure.

I also hope to gain some points for recycling.