After several years of one thing or another, with a pandemic thrown in for good measure, I’m finally getting back to working on the chair I’d stripped while I’d been hunting for the home I’m now living in. So much has happened since I stopped posting regularly, and while I will someday tell the story of why I had to step away from both working on and documenting the progress on the house, it is not this day. This day is about working with pieces of the old upholstery (kept as templates for the new pieces) and some documentation of what I’m seeing so I can replicate it with the new fabric.
I’ve not yet learned how to use the compressor I’d bought to do all the stapling required in upholstery work, so I’m tackling the seat cushion first, no stapling involved. Up until this morning the old cover was in one piece, but now it’s in three: top, bottom, and side. The side includes a zipper, and the cushion was piped, and the construction is a bit different from what one would see in a home decorating book.
First, the piping is part of the side piece, a 6 inch wide strip of fabric that wraps around the entire cushion, connecting the top and bottom pieces. In this instance, it is actually three strips, with one being the insert for the zipper. The zipper itself is about 26 inches (it’s made by attaching a zipper pull to the length of zipper teeth, not premade as one would purchase from a fabric store). It is a center-lap construction, with a length of fabric attached at both ends, one at about 6-8 inches, the other the required length to encircle the cushion.
From what I can tell, the process is attach lapped fabric sides to the zipper, creating the zipper insert, attach zipper insert to both the short piece and the longer piece (with the pull at the shorter fabric end of the insert when closed), and then the piping is added to both edges of the side fabric, with the center measuring 2 1/2 inches between the piping.
The zipper is white, and with the blue fabric planned for this chair, a darker zipper is in order, even though it’s unlikely anyone will see it. There’s also thread to be purchased, and while I have an abundance of piping, it’s all cotton and bigger than the original, so I’m going to have to do some experimenting to see if the larger piping will look good. For now, I’ll make a template from one of the front/back pieces to cut those from the fashion fabric, plus one 6″ and one 58″ piece for the extensions, as well as two 28″ x 3.5″ pieces for the zipper insert. Once these pieces are cut, looks like a trip to the local Joann’s is in order.
Just for reference, here’s the disassembled top and bottom pieces.
To make the template, I’ve ironed the right one, to flatten all the seam allowances, folded it in half lengthwise, and will then outline it on some of the lovely packing paper we’ve been collecting since the pandemic forced us to resort to online/mail order much more frequently than we’d normally do.
Tomorrow, masking up and heading to Joann’s, we’ll see if they have everything needed to proceed. For now, a sense of movement!
instructions to the cook 