Upholstery

“My first attempt at upholstering the chair ended in a lot of swearing and head scratching. I tried making a seat cushion with piping around the edges but I wasn’t pleased with the look. The piping was just too much with the pattern. So then I started over, instead making a cushion with top stitching rather than piping. Finally satisfied with the cushion, the next step was to reupholster the chair’s seat. Fortunately, that was merely a matter of using the old seat as a pattern for cutting the new one. The new seat installed beautifully despite my lack of official upholstery tools. [...] The first piping that I tried was too large and made the chair look sloppy. I reluctantly pulled the piping back off the chair (it had been SO MUCH WORK to apply!) and replaced it with thinner piping, attempting to match the pattern as I went along. Bingo! The thinner piping did the trick.”

“I've wanted to learn how to reupholster for a while and I tried to sign up for an upholstery class in my area, but the instructor rejected my proposed project (the wingback chair) and you couldn't join the class without an approved project. So I did it anyway, except on my own with no guidance! This is one of two chairs I got for $20 at Goodwill 10 years ago and that the cats have torn up, so it was a very low stakes first project. There were many mistakes made and lessons learned, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Unfortunately the fabric I chose (a textured chenille) is still tempting for the cats, so I'll choose more wisely when I reupholster the second one.”