Upholstery week 5

I'm just about to head off to week 6, but here is quick run down of week 5.

Firstly all the curved bits were snipped so the fabric sits nicely. These areas will be covered with the outside upholstery but i still needed to be careful to snip enough to make it smooth, but not so far that the snips will show when the outside fabric is put on.

Then I decided to put an extra layer of new 2cm foam on the arms and stapled it down well, and covered it with wadding. The foam is to give it better "squish" (technical term!) as the old stuff was a bit mean! and i can feel the wood of the arms through it. Given that i will mostly knit or crochet in this chair, it needs good arms. The wadding is to smooth over the lumps and where the staples are so you can't feel any bumps.
This week i will hopefully be putting fabric on the arms.

Hopefully back with more photos later
T'il soon ❤️

Upholstery Course - Weeks 3 & 4

Well the wings took me two weeks. Those pesky pleats!

I covered the foam with poly-wadding (like what you put in quilts really) to even out any lumps and just give it an extra bit of squish.  Then cut  2 x rectangles. Covering the measurements of the length of the wing and the width of the widest part right through the back to the frame.

Once I'd got the fabric square on the wings i then temporarily tacked the bottoms to hold it in place then started working on the pleats above.  Of course the first one went quite well, and then the second, which needs to match the first in direction and number and approximate size - didn't go so well at all.  Which is why the wings took me two weeks! I got there though. 5 pleats facing down - pretty much pointing to a central point (if they had all been longer they should meet at a dot - mine was a big dot but it was a dot!)    In the end I stapled the pleats because the tacks weren't holding them very sturdily and that was making it harder. The velvet i am using is a bit thick and the tacks slip if i don't get them in far enough - through all those pleats i'd have needed a sledgehammer for the job!

So eventually, with a lot of gentle persuasion I got the wings looking smarter and then cut a notch in the bottom of the back to be able to straighten and tighten that.  It's all beginning to look a little smarter.

It's still only tacked in the main so there will be improvements as I staple it later in the course.  This week (week 5 already?!) I will be adding extra foam to the arms and hopefully starting to cover those.

T'il soon ❤️