Curb Collective Update

As our regular followers will know, last year nearly 20 students graduated from Reuse Repair Recycle Furniture - A partnership with TAFENSW Outreach and The Bower designed to teach skills to the local community.This year many of those students are continuing their study, workshopping ideas and business models to build a social enterprise that suits them. They also meet weekly to continue to hone their repair skills, working on a number of chairs and small foot stools in need of reuse and repair love.

Last week the group completed their first commission. Karen's chair was a street find - she saw the potential but didn't find the time to restore it herself (Sound familiar?!). Curb Collective also saw the potential for a contemporary new look for the piece and set to work stripping the yellow paint and upholstering the seat.
Although they bought fabric to complete the job, the group was keen to stick to The Bower's waste not ethos, and selected a panel of discontinued designer fabric from a remnant warehouse.

We couldn't be more excited to see what the group will come up with next, or how they will evolve, so stay tuned!

If you have a question, a query or a commission for Curb Collective send email to curbcollective@bower.org.au.

- Maaike

Back from the Finders Keepers market!

What a great week for Curb Collective! After the graduation night last Tuesday, we attended the prestigious Finders Keepers market, which happens twice a year in Sydney at Carriageworks, on Friday night and Saturday.

Maaike and Claire went early to the shed to prepare everything. A big THANKS to John Bartholomew who transported the furniture from Redfern to Carriageworks on Friday afternoon and the unsold furniture to The Bower on Saturday evening after the market! 

We had one of the biggest stalls there, which allowed us to display all our furniture, and we were situated just in front of the fashion room, so we were highly visible. 

A lot of people were interested both in our work and in joining the class, and the enthusiasm was palpable. We had a lot of questions about how the class had been set up, how we had found the furniture and the fabric, and a lot of customers asked if we we interested in restoring/repairing/reupholstering their furniture. By the way, we are! Send a mail to Maaike at gm@bower.org.au with pictures of your furniture and explanations of what you want to be done to them, and we'll keep in touch!

If you saw a piece of furniture during the market but hesitated to buy it, come and have a look here at The Bower! Some furniture were not sold, and they are in our consignment area!

Don't forget to follow the activity of Curb Collective on facebook too by liking the page: http://www.facebook.com/Thebowercoop

Graduation Night at Shed 107

Tuesday was a long day for Curb Collective! We rushed faster than ever to finish all our chairs in time for the graduation night on Tuesday evening and for the Finders Keepers market this weekend.

Sam and I sanded and painted two dining chairs on which we will put the butterfly cushions the group made last semester. You could feel our stress of not finishing on time, but we made it! Stuart and Mick finished another dining chair with the help of Maaike and Jeanette - one of the brightest of our collection: it's orange and red!

Miki and Dominique tried as hard as they could to finish the pair of yellow and pink chairs started at the Newtown festival, but unfortunately they would have needed more time as they refused to sacrifice quality to rapidity... You'll therefore be able to see them next term! They will be great as first pieces of the new collection!

Some students stayed after the class to set up everything for the Graduation Night. We were hugely proud and excited: our furniture looks so different when they are on platforms!

A big BRAVO to Maaike and Richard who created an amazing screen out of wooden doors found at The Bower, where they displayed pictures of the transformation of the furniture. This new way to raise awareness about reuse impressed everybody, and our only problem with it will be to prevent people from buying it at the market!

The Graduation Night was a great success. 5 different courses from TAFE Outreach graduated, among them our Shed neighbours WEAVE's construction and repair students who did an amazing job patching, fixing, organising and painting the shed and Hobo Gro who create vertical gardens in reused palettes, and, of course, Curb Collective!

And guess what? We already sold 5 pieces of furniture!!! So come as soon as you can to the Finders Keepers market on Friday and Saturday if you want to admire/buy our work, the furniture won't stay there for a long time!

 - Claire M -

December e-news

An early treat for you all - the December Newsletter for your reading pleasure, before the silly season kicks in and you've no time to think!

We hope you'll try and make this Christmas a reuse affair on all fronts - Those of you in the market for furniture sized christmas presents should be sure to come along to Finders Keepers at Carriageworks this Friday night 6-10 or Saturday 10-5 and pick up a genuine Curb Collective refurbished wonder.

A quick reminder also that we will be closed 24th Dec - 2nd Jan inclusive so hold on to your donations till we get back please!

The Home Stretch

With only 3 more classes before Curb collective graduate and show off their debut collection at Finders Keepers, there was no messing around this week!

Pete got stuck into a second coat of choc-walnut stain on the dining suite. Mark elected to start a brand new project, taking on the challenge of the 'mummy chairs' it took 4 hours for Mark, Sam and Sam to strip just one of these uglies back to basics. They won't be recogniseable when the group are finished with them though!

Jeanette and Jane chose a lovely red jaquard for an occasional chair - all Jeanette's research on upholstery is obviously paying off!

Fiona got a lesson in measuring and mitring timber from Cathy, using a length of old skirting board that provided just the right channel for her latest project - a perspex topped coffee table.

 Speaking of tables, This table was donated to The Bower with the top raw and unfinished. We took it to Curb Collective to see what they could do.

In between classes, Lesley tightened the legs and applied widths of walnut laminate to the top, she added a few coats of diluted timber stain to make the top match the legs and now it's ready for resale!

Finished with the table, Lesley joined Min and our newest collectee Tanh; applying the patchwork of fabric swatches to the plantation chair. The group learned how to cut templates on the fly, to fold, roll, niggle and tweak until the edges can be tidily tacked into place.

Next week we'll put the back on and our two big upholstery projects will be complete!

Miki and Claire were determined to finish their duck egg blue timber arm chair - but not at the expense of perfection! The pair worked very hard to match their stripes and make their final stitches invisible.

We stayed back for 20 minutes in the end, so determined were we to finish the chair!And voila!

 You can't appreciate the delicate blue/lemon stripe on the back of this chair from a photo - you'll have to come and see us at finders keepers. Here's a peek at other things you'll see if you stop by the Curb Collective stall on the 2nd or 3rd of December;

 

All proceeds from the sale of restored items will restock our shelves with paint, glue, laquer, needles and thread so we can keep flying the reuse flag in the city of Sydney.

Newtown Festival 2011

The sun was shining this Sunday for the 75,000 visitors of the Newtown festival!

Curbside Collective were there, right in the middle of the Local Vocal Village, easily visible thanks to the amazing tent built out of reused materials picked up at The Bower by John, our chairman of the Board: the structure was made out of palettes and the top out of an advertising banner which provided shade to everyone. A big thanks again from everybody, John!

Fiona and Emmanuel ran workshops during all day to show people what Curb Collective do at 107, seconded by Amanda, Cathy, Jeanette, Peter and Lesley who came to give them a hand at various stages throughout the day. We worked on an occasional chair collected weeks ago by The Bower and on a beautiful white rocking chair found by Fiona... on her way to the festival!

The Curbside Collective spirit has definitely gotten under her skin!

What's more, people were welcomed to bring their own pieces of furniture to learn one or two tricks on them. Many thanks to the lady who brought us 'thank you' chocolates, such a lovely surprise!

In front of the stall, John was building an impressive sculpture out of dozens of little bits of woods found in the backyard of The Bower, with the aim of building a huge arch for the ARC. Come to admire it, it's in front of The Bower at the moment!

It was a very busy day for each of us. We talked to a lot of people and were positively impressed by the number of signatureson our mailing-list  from people wanting to be kept in touch with the activities of Curbside Collective. If you forgot to write your name down, it's not too late! Just send an email to gm@bower.org.au and we'll add you to it!

- Claire M

sanding 101

TAFE Week 7 : A lot of woodwork!

This week was Phil's last time with us, so we decided to learn as much as we could from him before his leaving.

We got done to the job of salvaging a set of six chairs whose upholstery had been done last term. Some of them were broken: would we buy new parts to fix the ones being unusable, or would we take the good parts from other chairs and mix them up to have a smaller set? After a lot of talks, we decided that we preferred to stick to the “reuse and repair” ethos and to have 4 or 5 beautiful chairs, rather than buying new parts to have a correct set of 6.

Once this important decision was made, it was time to set to work! We dismantled the chairs, took the good parts from the bad ones to replace the bad parts of the good ones. It happened to be tricky for some bits as they were glued together, so Phil showed us how to do so with pieces of wood and a mallet.

And then you have... A lot of wood parts!

After that, now that we had the parts we wanted to use, we had to sand all the chairs/parts of chairs... which wasn't to everyone's liking: look at Miki's horrified face!

We formed pairs and triplets to quickly sand the set, and we happily realised that sanding those chairs was far easier than sanding the other ones we had done some weeks ago. 

Thanks a lot for all you taught us, Phil! Everything we learnt from you was very interesting and instructive!

- Fiona & Claire

Reuse Fabric Upholstery

107 : the place where the sun shines even when it’s raining outside!

Yesterday, Maaike started the course with a lesson: Phil had brought seats from home, and Maaike took this opportunity to teach us how to cover a seat cushion with some striped fabric, to show us how to watch out for pattern distortion. The secret? To smooth the cloth carefully, without pulling too much on it, and to take one's time, not hesitating to reposition staples.

To finish the cushion properly, we learnt how to put a dust cover under it to avoid the dirt from going in the chair. 

It was then time to take care of a chair we've all had a hand on to finalise it. The fabric chosen was some black velvet, and the tricky part was to fix it getting around its legs on the corners. It was not easy as we had to cover all the Dacron, but to leave the wood apparent. After having cut the excess of fabric, we put tackles on it so that it doesn’t move, and then we sew the two pieces of fabric with a curved needle. 

After that, each of us went on to other projects. Look at the armchair I filled with Glen: we first put coconut fibre until we cannot feel the springs anymore, then some flock to smooth it, and finally we covered everything with some Dacron to suppress the last bumps.

It was about time for the final test: sitting on it!

 
After the habitual feast, Miki and Peter went on with the gorgeous sunny yellow chairs we had started last week, using the curved needle tips Maaike had just taught us.

HURRAY! One of them is almost finished! 

With the black velvet one and the red stalls painted last week, our efforts start to bear fruits and we are prouder than ever of our projects!

 

- Claire M 

And Then Came Colour

Another industrious week with TAFE Outreach in Redfern! A quick round up revealed no less than 45 chairs in various stages of repair. While there are plenty waiting for some attention, I'm amazed to note that the group is tackling 3 arm chairs, 2 occasional chairs 6 cafe stools and 7 dining chairs all at once!

We're trying to work in stages - getting through the sanding on selected projects before applying finishes, so that we don't ruin great paint jobs with fine dust from sanding.

We can't help ourselves though - slowly the colour and the final fabrics are sneaking into the work pile and onto the furniture. And Oh! What a difference it makes!

The red stools got another light sand between coats of paint. A pair of scandinavian dining chairs that were stripped of one cover last week were stripped again in a game of Reuse Pass the Parcel. Miki, Claire and Lesley used steel wool to rub in a 50/50 solution of mineral turps and linseed oil - finessing the timber finish to a smooth dark caramel.

Our lunch break was suitably gourmet - We're becoming far too accustomed to baked treats and vegetarian delights. Cashew nut rice, apple crisps, home made hommous, dolmades, orange and avocado salad and guacamole! Why would you eat anywhere else?

After lunch we gave in to the fabric temptation.

Fabric donations have been rolling in, from upholstery designers and Bower Donors. Miki spied a deliciously happy yellow bedspread that provided just the antidote to the somber black vinyl that had once sat on these frames.

Bedspreads are a great option for reuse upholstery, usually thick and durable, they are often beautifully patterned and textured as well. Just remember to avoid fade marks and any wear and tear in the fabric when selecting a section to use!

The result is disarmingly charming -  I can't decide if it's 50's madmen or 70's kitsch in style, but it's like no other pair of danish chairs in town, and definitely brings a smile!

I'm ecstatic to see so much enthusiasm and productivity in the Redfern  Bower Reuse & Repair Centre and can't wait to see what everyone acheives next week.


- Maaike