Reupholstery Tips

I've been getting so many questions about how I covered my chair. So I thought I'd share some of the things that I learned and few helpful tips for those of you who are planning on trying an upholstery project for yourselves.
I can't say this is the "right" way to do it, but it worked for me and maybe it will for you too.

I started by removing the old upholstery, carefully, piece by piece. I suppose you could just rip in and tear off the old fabric but it is better to do it this way and I'll show you why in just a bit. A narrow flat screwdriver and a pair of pliers worked perfectly for loosening up and pulling out all of those staples.

Just before I removed the old fabric I would snap a picture of how the fabric was attached to the chair. This way I could just take a peek at the pictures of the old upholstery whenever I felt uncertain about how to put on the new fabric.

I also drew a picture of the chair and numbered each section in the order it would need to be covered. It helped me to break this project down into a bunch of smaller projects. It definitely made it seem less overwhelming.

The reason I took the time to carefully remove the original upholstery is because once I had it all off, I ironed it flat, labeled it, and used those pieces as the templates for cutting out the new fabric. I hardly had to measure anything at all!

Besides staples, some pieces were also held on with tack strips. They are sharp and scary and they look like this:

There were three sections with tack strip on my chair. I was able to reuse the original ones, but you can find new upholstery tack strip on ebay. I just pushed a pencil through the holes left in the old fabric onto the new fabric so I knew exactly where to place the tack strip on the new fabric.
After I had the new pieces all cut out, and the welting sewn I was ready to start putting the chair back together. I'd line up the fabric, pull taught and staple it in place in an inconspicuous place.
A hand stapler won't do. I tried. No good.
If you are going to try reupholstering a big piece of furniture, you will definitely need a stapler with some sort of power source. Adrian brought in his small air compressor with a staple attachment. There is just no way I would have gotten this project done without this thing.



A few of your questions:

How long did this take?
It took me about 4 days. Started Friday afternoon, finished up the cushion cover Monday.

Where did you find that fabric?
The fabric is a black ticking upholstery weight fabric that I found on ebay. It is still available here. I bought 7 yards and only used about 6. Although with a solid fabric I think I could have used less. With stripes I had to be sure to cut each piece with the stripes running in the right direction.

Did you just use a regular sewing machine?
Yes. When sewing the welting and arm pieces use a heavy duty upholstery thread and and needle for your machine. It makes sewing through all of that heavy fabric so much easier.

A few tutorials that I found helpful:

Sewing piping/welting at edeenut creates.

Covering a box cushion at threads and another good tutorial with great info on sewing a zipper into your cushion from Much To Do With Nothing.