Ed's Upholstery

Hello boys and girls. This is James Mayhen. This is for your vocational education course in upholstery. Today I'm going to go over techniques and supplies that you need to open up a home based re-upholstery shop. Some of you that want to go to college when you get done may even find this handy to work on the side. Okay first of all I'm going to talk about Albright supply in Corinth, Mississippi. Their phone n This is where you get your supplies and materials. You can't work without supplies and materials and they're the only one that I know that's doing this successfully. Okay here is your card for marking. IB means inside back. You mark your fabric pieces IB inside back, IA inside arm, IW inside wing, OB for outside back, OA for outside arm, OW for outside wing. B or D means bottom and C is center, L is right, I mean R is right, L is left. Okay this is, I'm going to go very fast but you can pause and replay. The first part of re-upholstering a chair after you have the cover completely off is your decking. The decking that goes under the loose cushion. The inside arm is your second part. The inside wing is your third part if it's a wing back chair. The inside back is the fourth part. The outside wing is your fifth part. The outside arm is the sixth part. The outside back is the seventh part. The skirt is the eighth part. The dust cover on the very bottom, the black camber is n It's the last part. And then finally your sewn part that's going to be most inspected and needed to sew a machine is your loose cushion. Or during the upholstery process you're going to have to sew the decking. Okay the decking is straight line on your decking. And you're going to have to sew your cording and your double cording, double welt. And then the welt and on your cushion and install zippers. Your welt strips have to be one and one-half inch wide. Your seam allowance. What is a seam allowance? It's the part that you sew. It's one-half inch. You cut your pattern the way it looks or not really cut, but you look at your pattern and then make it all the way around one-half inch. So the tops are half inch larger, the bottoms half inch larger, and each side the half inch larger. If you're doing a side that's has two sew pieces together, each one of those have to be as half inch. Let your seam allowance. You need button and spring twine. They're different. Spring twine is a little thicker. It's more But the button twine is a heavier nylon. Take measure and a ruler. Guard stick. Everything you got to measure. Gimp, welt, or cording. You got to have a carpenter square. Remember this. Mohair and Velvets, anything plush Always go straight down. Muzzlin are no stretch fabric. When a pull string chooses an up pull string out of fabric, make sure that it is not a stretch fabric. And Muzzlin is sometimes used for the inside of very expensive pieces of furniture before you put on your outer cover. Synthetic or natural burlap. Natural burlap is made of jute consistency and the synthetic is made almost Jute webbing, what goes on the very bottom. What holds your springs in place. A poultry tax. If you don't have a pne And you can get everything that I mentioned. You can get them through Albright supply in current Mississippi. Codrips, they go on the inside, the top outer back, and the inside outer arm. Top of the outer arm. Skirt lining material. Comes in different widths. Recommend using something light. It's not the stiff kind. Decorative brass nail and brass trim. Those are the shiny brass nails that you see sometimes on the outside of furniture. I don't recommend using those and mainly for the reason is because they come out so easily. Tack bar strip or slip stitch. The tack bar goes on the outer back of the chair. This big long bar with metal or metal tax that appears out of the metal or if the cardboard strips will have tax in, you punch them in your back and then turn them in and then hammer them with a covered mallet. Apulso tree zipper tape and zips. That's for your cushion. Nose sag springs and clips. Actually the nose sag springs are curved within and they are very dangerous to work with. I've been hurt before and you can too. They will cut you. They're very sharp. I don't recommend using nose sag springs because it will eventually pull your frame apart. Bar springs were mainly used on antique furniture from the 20s and 30s that you can get them from restores supply. Usually eight-way tie on the top. Coal springs. These are the least springs that you often see in mattresses and stuff. These are sometimes need to be eight-way tie on the top. You have different kinds of foam that you can also get from Albright supply. Now Western Excelsior is not available through Albright supply. Western Excelsior has Excelsior for antique restoration. A lot of times when you open up antique piece it'll have the wood shavings. It's not It's long slender sharp wood shavings. It's called Excelsior and that is used in antique furniture instead of using a foam. If you don't want to use foam in your furniture you can use the Excelsior cotton batting. It's the final thing that you put over top before you put your or what? Probably not polypone. Fiber feel and I need to make the card for that. Hold on just a second while I make the card for the fiber feel. So we used in Ply grip or slip stitch. Two techniques there. The Ply grip is the metal thing that looks It's bendable. It has two holes on the bottom with three prongs and that's bendable. You can put your fabric in there. If you don't do this you'll have to slip stitch it. This is in places that are curved on the outside. I recommend learning how to slip stitch because if you make a mistake you can take out the slip stitch where you slip the stitch but if you make a mistake in this you've run that piece of fabric because those barbs will eat it through. So if you'll learn to slip stitch you'll be able to post or any piece of the holster furniture. You need to learn to slip stitch. Okay when you're beginning upholstery you need to wear a light sport glove. This will keep you from hurting or cutting your hands something that's comfortable that you can flex in because during the process your hands will slip and have to be eaten up by the staples intact. So a light sports leather glove as a beginner and when you get in there three or four or five years you'll need to start removing those gloves because you'll be used to working that way. When doing an order for a customer you need a customer receipt pad. Anytime a customer gives you money you write it down and what it's for. Usually the way that I do business the customer will give me 50% of the labor up front and 50% when it's done and then up front they pay for 100% of the cost of fabric. Now I'm not talking about double the process in those fabric books and supply houses. You charge the fabric at cost. For example if you order the fabric and it's 48 dollars that's going to be higher. If you order the fabric and it's 198 dollars for that project then you charge 198 dollars and whatever tax it is plus 50% of your labor. So what we just talked about is the fabric house books. They're good but you want to charge them what you pay. We've got the supply catalogs. I don't know if they still have those but I'll brought supply is your source for those. Machine oil for your sewing machine. Two inch upholstery pens. That's what you use when you do your slip stitching. You mark your fabric with tailor's chalk pencils and pens. When using pencils and pens make sure that you're going to be able to seal that some way because you can't start a race that are marking out stuff on it. It's just stuff that's not going to show usually most of posters only recommend tailor's chalk. Okay school poster board. When you're making a pattern for a seat fishing you want to fit that poster board in there or if you're marking if you're trying to recover something that has a damage fabric that poster board is going to lay flat and give you a more accurate pattern. So the school poster board is for pattern use. A poster shears and other scissors. Poster shears are about this long about 12 inches long. Wall mount pin cushion homemade pin cushion made of wood and burlap stuff with hay or straw so you can stick your pins in there and the outside cover is burlap. If you have a home machine you'll need a roller foot. A roller zipper foot is best for the high shank machine but you can't find those for the low shank machine. You need a double cording foot Ken Moore used to make a high shank machine and one fourth inches this is what you need for your double cording foot or double well. You need the empire gimp stapler again you can get this through all bright supply. Via fine wire stapler vea you need a home machine that has a zigzag or a serger. This is only for the loose arm cover. So you go on the outside of the chair couch you're doing. You need button molds cutters and dies size n Excuse me. You need a handy junior button maker. You need a cushion stiffer there'several different sizes and they're very expensive. You need hog ring pliers. You need serpentine no sag wire bender. After you cut your serpentine wire no sag springs it's going to fling back so you need to wear eye protection. But you need to bend the end of it so when you put the clips in it doesn't come off the clips. You need a clinch it tool. You need bolt cutters to clip the sewing machine needles and your no sag wire or any other kind of wire use in a pulsary. You need a medi PSI means what pressure per square inch. You need carpet covered work table. You need a cutting table for your fabric. You need Clamps or strap clamps for the gluing process of your frames or repair of your frames. And you need four bar clamps. I recommend two nine foot clamps and two six foot clamps. Those are handmade and you can get the parts of the black iron cast iron from your hardware store. Hand tools. If starting on a low budget and you don't have money for an industrial sewing machine I recommend the Singer 15-91. There's other Singer sewing machines that you can use. There's also Kenmore high shank machines. Anything with a high shank the Singer is a low shank. If you can find a high shank sewing machine that's homemade for the home then you can use that. Faf 1245 sewing machine that's your industrial sewing machine with the walking foot in reverse. I recommend those. About two thousand dollars maybe three Giffy steamer. Steaming out all the wrinkles after you're done with the post rent. You need curved needles for slip stitch. You need long mattress needles to put in your decking and your buttons. Regular tools again. Regular hammer. Snipping pliers. And when I say snipping pliers I mean these. These are your snipping pliers to pull out staples. You need a black rubber mallet. And then after you get your black rubber mallet cut a piece of fabric to go over it and tack in those of the fabric to the head that way you won't mar your fabric. You need a scratch aisle. Top these staple puller or berry picker. And that does it ladies and gentlemen. I've gave you about a 20 minute presentation on things that you need for to do your upholstery shop and how to do business. I'll give you a supply catalog list for suppliers. I've listed everything that you should know. There's nothing in there that's not covered. A doc It's bad for the lungs and if you're cutting foam rubber out you gotta make sure that it's cut to size and not have to glue up pieces. People don't It ruins the material. So you don't use spray glue as seen in some of these YouTube videos. Okay boys and girls listen for today. I'll try to come back tomorrow if you want me to and give you some more tips and pointers. If you have any questions write them in the comments and I'll get to them. Thank you. Have a great day and remember do your best work at home.