Wanna Be.

I'm an upholster wanna be. I am by no means good at it, but I still attempt to do it. As I write, right now I have a chair sitting at the upholster, that I can hardly wait to see. When I brought my chair to her I told her how my inner "want to do over" sometimes takes me over and then I flounder get frustrated and  want to throw the furniture out the window. Thus it was with this chair. She suggested to me to start small (which I thought I was) and work my way up.

                                                                    I picked this.

                                                 I had this footstool that I bought for $10.

It wasn't in bad shape but I knew something was amiss when you sat on it. I know its for feet but sometimes I sit on these things.

Upon tearing it apart I noticed that the cushioning was beginning to fall through, and because it had a dust cover on the bottom I wasn't able to see that when I bought it. But that was pretty minor anyway.

The thing I like most about upholstery is that you save anything thats good on a piece. So in the end, only a small amount actually goes into the garbage. 

 All of the little things like nails, that gray cardboard rounded stuff you see and the padding was saved.

Next I checked and tightened the springs and added a new piece of burlap.

 I put the padding back on, put my new fabric upside down and measured corners for sewing. I pinned the corners into place using safety pins because I was too lazy to run all the way upstairs to get my pins. You do this in order to get your corners tight and fit properly over the edge.

I also made new piping.

 Using my hand stapler, I stapled the top first, then the piping.

Now being out in the boonies sometimes represents a problem. You don't have access to what you need. So I improvised and anyone who actually knows how to upholster may insert laughter here.

In order to have a crisp line a real upholsterer will use cardboard strips.

This is what I used.

 

I think I've mention my "lack of patience" problem before and since I decided that, that day was the day to do this project...yes I used a cereal box as my strips.

I also added some extra va-va -voom  in the form of quilt batting. I don't think that this is the proper stuff either, but that's what I had. The strips are under the padding. 

Next my corners. Each corner was measured then sewed so that all the corners would line up.

Now referring back to this picture the bottom piece was stapled along this edge and then flipped, wrapped around. (This is when those cardboard pieces come into play). I then stapled the fabric to the bottom.

 Added a dust cover, and put the legs back on.

It's not perfect but I like it, and it was a learning project, and I learned a lot. I hope you get the gist of what I was trying to do. In my mind, what I wrote looks right but sometimes what happens in my mind doesn't always get written down.

And so few of you have mentioned not being able to make comments on here. You can find me on Facebook as well if you choose to make a comment or ask a question, and I'll see about fixing this problem. :)