Grain Sack with a Surprise

One of my most favorite things is old grain sacks.  I love the nubby texture and the blue stripes finish it off for me.  The very fact that some of these have survived for 100 years is proof enough that they're great for upholstery.  I mean, what else am I going to do with a grain sack??

So I found this fabulous settee recently and have been waiting for time to work on it.

The hubster had to help me take off the old upholstery.  There were thousands of upholstery nails!  I then gave it two coats of Plaster Paint.  Not my favorite brand of chalk-type paint, but I wanted to try it.  The result was pink mahogany bleed-through.  Yeah.  Not fun.  (Note: this wasn't the Plaster Paint's fault.  Mahogany will bleed through the best paints out there.  It has something to do with the tannin in the wood.)

I took pictures of the pink mess but can't find them for the life of me! Seems to be the way things are going these days!  

Well, they say the way to block mahogany bleed-through is with a coat of shellac.  I used a spay on shellac that did the trick.  Then another two coats of paint and no more pink!   I gave it a coat of wax and some dark wax to accent the carving.

I decided this was the perfect piece for a grain sack.  Now I've got a stash of them.  I've picked them up at various flea markets and have a hard time parting with them.  But I knew this was the perfect piece for one.  I found a grain sack that was long enough and cut it open to lay it flat.  Guess what I discovered inside!  

I'm not sure what it says but I'm pretty sure it's not English!  How cool is that!  Don't you wish you knew the story??

So I salvage the writing for a future project and upholstered the bench in the rest.

I've reupholstered a few seats in my day, but they've always been the kind where you staple the fabric to the underside.  Not this one.  This one stapled onto the top.  That wasn't so hard in the front.  The back was another matter.  See those skinny spaces between the cushion and the back slat?  Yeah, my staple gun wouldn't fit in there.  So the hubster got out his compressor with the fancy pneumatic stapler and I used that.  Something about that makes you feel so powerful!  Honestly, though, it was very easy to use and I got all of the fabric stapled down.  

The next step was to glue down some trim to cover the staples.  Here is it across the front of the bench.

I'm thrilled with the final product:

The seam across the cushion is where the previous owner actually pieced it together, another great part of it's history that I decided to preserve.  If you look at the left leg, I also attached the draw-string from the sack.  

I've done another bench in grain sack.  You can see it here.

But I do believe I love this one more!