How To Upholster a Couch

hey guys Jamie ray with Jamie ray vintage today's DIY is how to upholster a vintage couch these are my favorite couches to upholster because they have wooden frames which makes it easy to staple into and they don't have any rolled arms so it's a fairly straightforward process I'm going to give you a few tips and hints on how to do it and you'll notice that there are no cushions on my couch we're not going to be talking about sewing cushions I don't like to so I have the seamstress and I dropped my fabric off and pay her to do it so you can you film yourself or find somebody else who's great with a sewing machine so the first step you got to do is get this old fabric somebody tried to paint this so you can see that it's blue or whatever but I'm just gonna rip it all off and use my pliers first you have to get off the piping and then you get underneath to the fabric underneath sometimes it's kind of hard I'm gonna try to leave the batting in place so that way I can reuse it if it's not reusable then I'll buy new batting at the store and usually when I get about this far it's what I have zebb come and he rips the whole thing apart for me once you take the fabric off you want to remove any loose staple you so we're going to go ahead and get to adding the fabric once we pulled all the fabric off of this we noticed that the back was just powder the foam had disintegrated completely so does that pass some footage you could see him cutting with the phone we put on here foam we just got it at Home Depot we cut it to fit and then we're wrapping it with batting that I bought at the craft store you can also by phone with the craft store that the foam at Home Depot is significantly less expensive and it works pretty well so once we wrap this with batting then we're ready to have a fabric so now we're going to be adding our fabric we have to move inside because it started raining which was raining on our parade here so we're going to get started right in the middle and I'm going to use my air compressed staple gun if you don't have an air compressed aple gun go ahead and use your handheld and I'm going to staple just along the wood line where was originally stapled the first time and I'm just going to come across here and pull nice and taut so the next step we're just going to be pushing this fabric underneath and pulling it to the other side so I pulled my fabric through the bottom and I'm going to go ahead and pull this as taut as I can and then stick about every inch is how far you want your staples to be now that the top and bottom are done we're just gonna shove these sides through this is where if you haven't gotten all the staples out you will definitely feel it right down here there's a bar that connects to the couch so what you have to do is you have to make a snip so you can get around that bar click pull the fabric out in the bars right about there I'm going to cut to about two inches from the bar okay then I'm going to push the fabric through I will come around to the other side here's the part where I've snipped I'm gonna gently pull and make sure it's as close as possible kind of tearing a little as I go but just go ever so slowly so you don't over tear once you know you've got all the way then you're going to go ahead and staple the sides so it's usually good if you've got somebody with you to have them go around the front and make sure that you don't have any puckers and you might also need to right here with the core is make a little snip that way your fabric will come the way that you wanted to so I'm just checking the front making sure we don't have any wrinkles and I'm gonna go ahead and say fall I'm going to go ahead and do the exact same process on this other side and then we'll get started on the bottom of our couch the next step is we're going to be doing the bottom the bottom is much like the top we're going to lay it out we're going to find our corners so there's a corner here and I'm going to snip in this corner that way you can go around the bar and then I'm going to push it underneath and I'm going to do the same thing on the other side that way you can get around the bar and I'm going to push this underneath now I'm going to snip it at this corner to get around this bar now I'm going to pull my fabric around all the corners and get it nice and tight now that my fabric is all smooth I'm going to go ahead and staple on the front I always like to start in the middle and work my way across I'm just feeling where the line is for the wood trim you want to write it next to that I'm going to come almost all the way to the end and I'm gonna stop I'll get the quarters once I get to that part add a few staples that didn't go in so I'll staple right next to them and I'll come back and pull this out once you get to the corner you're going to pull this edge piece back around to the side and staple it taut then you're going to come back around on this side and go all the way over to the corner then you're going to take this leftover piece here and you're going to fold it flat and add two plates one over here and pull it around and do one over here then come across and staple you're going to do the same thing on the other side once you're finished with that then you'll go around to the back of the couch and do the back okay so once you come around to the back you're going to take your fabric and pull it taut and staple I start in the middle and then I work my way across and I didn't show it but I did make a slit here where this wood pieces and a slit over here where this wood pieces that way my fabric could get around these braces I'm going to go ahead and staple this all the way across and then we'll get over to our other sides we're in do each side on the bottom you're going to pull it super taut and staple across so on the arms we've added extra batting because the batting we had to remove and then I've put cut a piece of fabric just a little bit bigger than my arm here and then I made two snips one snip here and one snipped down at the bottom and pulled my fabric through like I've done in all the other places and now I'm ready to staple so I'm going to go ahead and start at the top and I'm going to work my array around this way and then we'll do the stapling on the back you could do this in two separate pieces he do a piece here and then a piece across this way but I chose to do it in one and you'll see why in a minute and then I'm also going to have to cut this excess fabric so we can wrap I'm going to cut this excess fabric off here come down this far then I'm going to take I'm going to cut a little bit further I'll have to trim this up a little bit more later but I'm coming all the way down to this here and then I'm going to take my fabric and I'm going to come around the arm like this I'm going to tuck this part in so how many raw edges and then I'm going to come and I'm actually just gonna staple along here because we can put this piece on the other piece will come up here and cover that so I'm going to staple around this part of the arm now I'm going to come around this part of the chair and staple around here so I'm going to snip the fabric right here and tuck that under and then I'll come around this side and see clothing so now I'm going to take this fabric staple down I'm going to do the same thing on the other side and then we'll be ready to put on our arms alright time for the tufting I left this old fabric that held the springs in place and kept them padded we left that in there and it's got the marks where the old Tufts were so I don't have to remark it out so what I'm going to do I just have this dowel here it's kind of pointed then I'm going to run it into these holes and I'll show you what it looks like on the front too I pushed it through the foam and then now I can feel where my Brad goes where my for my tuft and I'll show you on the front here this is where I pushed through my foam right here I'm just going to take the bread it's pointed put it right on the tip of that dowel and follow it back through the foam and open it up okay so here's what it looks like on the back end now that I pushed it through the foam you push pretty hard on the front with your hand on the front of that Brad and you open this up all right we're getting the sides put on here I am doing coffee shaft on the side of these but I have to put this drop cloth underneath it so that way you don't see the cun but if you weren't going to do the coffee Shack you would just do the drop cloth and then be done so I'm just stapling this on the tip here along the edge and then I'll calm down and staple this corner here and then I'm going to cut off this fabric so that way I can get a nice straight line across here and make it a little easier so I don't have so much excess then I'm just going to follow this around and staple along the bottom and then along this way and pull it around the back so we've got our drop cloth underneath to line it and we're going to start with our coffee sack I think I paid like 50 cents for these and they've been hanging around my garage for maybe a year so I'm excited to use them a couple things about coffee sacks they're kind of scratchy so if you use them for pollster you're going to want to use them on a part of the couch where people aren't rubbing up against or sitting against because it's not super comfortable on the second thing is sometimes they smell like whatever's been in them beans coffee cocoa beans whatever has been in there so I took this and I threw it in the dryer with some fabric softener and it smells so much better and it's actually even a little softer so it's a little tip for you if you use these sacks so I'm going to go ahead and just staple along here just the way that I put this other piece on and then when I get to the section where this piece meets up with this other piece that I had up front I'm just going to fold this under neatly so that way you don't see the seam and I will show you a close-up of it when I'm done once you get the top done and you're going to go ahead and come across the bottom so right here I took the coffee sack and I folded it under and stapled it here and here so that way I've got a nice clean seam and you won't see any rough edges we're getting really close to finished here we're going to put this back on I'm going to start in the middle and I'm going to use my staple gun and then put a staple about every inch and I'm going to go over the top and down on the sides and then I'll show you how we finish underneath so we stapled across the top and I said it was going to go down the sides but I actually didn't I just stapled across the top now I'm going to do the bottom I'm going to pull it as taut as possible and then do the sides to get the rest of wrinkles so you're going to want to whatever fabric you use you want to pull it so that way there's no creases in there you're going to start in the middle and work your way across the side okay so we've got our top down or bottom done and now we're going to work on our sides when I'm all finished this will have trimmed down the side so it'll cover my staples so I'm just going to pull this top and just staple it down the side I'm gonna do the same thing on the other side I'll trim off all this excess fabric and we'll be ready to get our trim on so the final step is going to be to hot glue our trim on you're going to want to use a high temp hot glue you needed to stick really well and you're going to put a good amount of glue on there because you don't want this to come off after I get it on sometimes I add a little bit more if it's not enough and you're going to go everywhere that you have a raw edge or staples you're going to cover it up with trim so I'm going to go ahead and glue this on to this entire couch and we'll show you the finished project when we're all done alright guys we've got our finished couch here it was a little bit of work but not too hard I think if I had to sell the cushions that would have been even worse well we've got our trim on here and it's ready to go to its new home be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to jamie ray vintage also check out the link below for my other no sew upholstery tutorials

Channel: Jami Ray Vintage

Views: 241,301

Rating: 4.7699738 out of 5

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Id: MS7AaUaoogU

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2016