Real-world making brings some kind of benefit to a writer. Using actual materials with actual tools provides a different creative boost. So I tell myself. Maybe it’s just writing avoidance.

Anyway. The barrel chair. When I bought it more than a decade ago, I thought it was a leather chair. But it was something they call bonded leather, a product that has the same relationship to leather that medium-density fiber board has to solid wood. It failed quickly, which was a shame because it’s one of my favorite chairs.

I have no experience with upholstery. On the other hand, I’ve worked through the making stages with other projects and thought I had most of the skills to pull it off.

Previous projects: I designed and constructed bug netting for the van windows, a hand-sewn quilt that took almost a year to complete, and an intricate embroidery work that included challenging stitching, then mounting and framing the work. With no looming deadline, these projects were more like play.

Bonded leather fails in a particular peeling fashion. No way to fix it. I used my seam ripper to remove it from the chair which under the fake outer material looked well-constructed (solid wood, in other words). I detached all the pieces that had been sewn together so I’d have templates to use to cut my new fabric, a sturdy polyester-acrylic blend. I sacrificed an old loose-weave cotton drop-cloth to do a practice run so as not to waste expensive fabric on the learning curve.

I laid out the bonded leather pieces on the cotton, cut them out and then sewed them together and fitted them over the chair to ensure the strategy would work.

It did so I repeated the effort with the expensive fabric.

The internet — with all its great how-to videos — made my effort seem reasonably achievable and convinced me I’d need an upholstery stapler to succeed. A DIY upholsterer helped me figure out which pneumatic stapler would be best for me. And the manufacturer I chose had some great how-to videos showing how to use the stapler on real-world projects. (I only injured myself slightly learning how not to injure myself.)

Here’s the newly covered chair. Perfectly good though not entirely perfect.

Perhaps real-world work buttresses imaginative work. Or maybe just taking a break from being in my head is its chief value.