the seat!

So, this is a picture of what the old springs and webbing looked like before I took it out. The webbing was plastic, and the springs were tied together in a crazy spider-web looking mess. While there should be a lot of twine crossing back and forth, there apparently should have been more knots and fewer crazy diagonals...

Here is what my *new* webbing looks like. It's a burlap/natural webbing, and feels so much nicer and real than the old crumbly plastic. I think this will actually hold up better, longer.

A view of my seat webbing from the top.

My pretty new springs! Well, the springs are the same old springs, but the ties are new. For some reason, i didn't take a pic of the final look of the springs; there was also an X of twine across the seat, from diagonal corner to corner. All the twine and knotting keeps the springs in place and keeps them from unpleasantly poking people when they sit down. The springs are supposed to be tied together in a sort of gently curved, dome-like shape...

A close-up of my knots. Whee! Next, a layer of burlap is stapled and stitched over the springs to contain them. after that, the front of the seat has to be shaped...

Out of PIG HAIR! Or horse hair, whichever it is. This is the giant pile of hair I used to create the structure of the seat front. Previously, it was made of rolled-up brown paper. Hmm. The brown burlap hanging out is going to come down over the pile of hair to contain it and allow me to shape it all.

This is the giant, double-ended needle used to shape the seat. I stitched around and through the hairy burlap and used the needle and twine to pull the hair down and tightly shape it where i wanted it. You can see it starting to form a ledge.

After one row of stitching around the seat. I did three rows of this, pulling and tightening the horse/pig hair to make the hard ledge.

My three rows of stitching. You can see where I was running out of hair on the side, where it's dipping down. After all this, we filled in on top of the burlap with fiberfill to smooth and pad it out.

Then, I attached the outer seat fabric. It is stapled to the frame around the edges, but also sewn to the burlap of the seat itself, so it doesn't scooch around. It's inside this part that the fiberfill lives.

What a pretty seat!