The Master Upholstery

What I'm going to show you here today is basic way of doing a chair seat. It's the simplest t First of all, of course, is to remove your seat from your chair. T It's called a scratch-all. T It's just a matter of getting it. Now make sure your hand is not in front for obvious reasons. And put your staple remover or your scratch-all underneath and press down. And just force the staple up. So you notice it's just up over the top of the dust cover. So you take your side cutters, standard for any toolbox, and just pull your staple out. And you continue on doing that. And removing all of t Once t And a lot of times the foam itself will have to be replaced. And that is just a matter of going to your local foam supplier. And I suggest that you always buy So then you're going to cut your piece out on the foam. Now t I'm going to show you a sheet of foam here. So what you're going to basically do is you're going to take your seat and remove then you're going to lay t And you just mark out the shape of your foam, leaving at least a quarter of an inch all the way around t So you're going to mark it a quarter of an inch wider than what you have here. So then you're going to take it and cut it. What works well is a carving knife. The reciprocating blade's carving knife works well. And you just take that and you cut it out to the shape. If you don't have that, use a ruler. Press down on the foam and use a utility knife. Down to your wood, your foam, and then your polyester batting. Now you can use quilt batting. It's available most every place. You can also use that. So I would also suggest that you spray a little bit of adhesive. You can buy that as well. There's a fabric adhesive on here. That helps to hold it in place when you're upholstering. So you're going to take your cloth tape or your tailor's tape. And then you take your chair. Give it one inch past for stapling. Bring it around. And also an inch down here. So we're looking at 20 inches for t And measure 20 inches that way. Same t One inch all the way around. And you're at 23 inches. OK, so then you're going to take t Making sure that your pattern repeat is in the center of your chair. T Especially if you're doing anyt In t So what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut it, mark it in my piece. And I have that done. So I've marked out my piece of fabric. A few measurements I just had there. OK, so another important step is making sure you get the center of your fabric. Being at the center of your pattern repeat. So I'm using, in t W Because t And I want that on every chair I do. Make a little snip. And that's my center mark. I want to take an ordinary square. And follow the chair down till you get it. The fastest way to do it is just follow the chair down till you get it at an even not at a half mark. So it's 15 and I'm going to center it at 7. 5. So I have a center. Then I'm going to make a mark here. Take my square. Square it off on the edge. And just draw a line right down through the center. So that's my center mark on my chair. Very important. Centering is very important. So then we're going to take, you can see here the center mark that goes up through. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to lay my piece of fabric down. And I'm going to lay t Roughly around the center. I ball it to the center. T Gives me room to work with it. Actually I'll do t So you can see the center mark here and there's the center line. Actually I'll put a little mark here. So there's your center line. So I bring t Bring it up. Put it here. And use the stapler. You can use a hand stapler. Best the next best t So you can see here it's lined up on the center. So I'll put a staple here. So then I'm going to do the same here. Making sure I'm centered. Just a slight little push down. And then I'll put a staple here. Now for people who are not used to doing t So what I'm going to do is I have t I'm going to make a mark right here. And I'm going to measure that. So that gives me two inches. So what I'll do is I'll go up here. Measure down two inches. Put a mark there. Two inches from here. Put a mark there. And then I'm going to join these two with a line. So now what I have, as you can see, I have a line going across here. Reason being is if you push the reason I do that is because I can pull my fabric down using my hand, pull it down to that line, put a staple in there, continue on across And I have a perfectly straight line all the way across. So you don't have uneven pull marks. It looks terrible when it's Do the same t And all the way across here, these sides, you just bring down. Now you won't be putting a line on the sides. You just kind of got to judge that. But I usually put a staple here and a staple there. And the reason I do that is if everything is centered up this way and this way, then you see I don't have any distorted lines If I was to do that without doing each side, chances are I'm going to end up with t And that looks terrible. You have distorted lines, especially working with stripes. Plain fabric is not much to worry about. But still, regardless of the fabric you use, you should always do t Center, center, line across, same t And you can't go wrong. Corners, I'm going to keep that even there, staple. But a little harder to do with a hand stapler. I wouldn't suggest using a hand stapler, though people use them. And I'm going to bring t And I'm just going to basically do the corner here. I won't do any of t Just give you some idea how to do the corner. So what you're going to do is pull your fabric in here. Staple there. Bring t Staple. Am I good? There. Now, you can see I have kind of a corner made here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my shears and cut out. So probably about an inch back from the main corner here, from here to here. Then make a cut from here to here. And what I'm doing is just basically cutting out the bulk of the fabric so I don't end up with a big bunch here. Make sure your chair looks all out of kilter when you attach it. So you can see it's piece cutter cut down. Then you just take that piece. Pull it over. And staple here and here. And voila, you have a corner. So t As you can see, there's no pull marks. I told you, make sure you have your center in here. So I have t In t Most people out there don't have access to the mac But if you check with your local upholster, he might oblige you and make some piping for you. What I've done here is I have put a dust cover over. T So you put a bit of dust and dust cover. All you have to do is go to your local Canadian Tower or Walmart and pick up the landscaping material. Landscaping material makes great dust cover. Cut it out of t Staple it on the same as you would staple your fabric. And that's the problem. That's your chair's done. You're going to be all happy about it. There you go.