How to Upholster: Padding A Chair

welcome back to upholstery on Broadway today we have a very challenging job to show you this is a noxious brass rocker putting all turn of the century and as an upholstery sometimes you have to be a little bit of a detective in order to proceed and do it the correct way now this piece has had an unfortunate light as far as poultry goes frame is gorgeous but it has been redone a few times and not correctly I might might say but anyhow originally this had a drop in unit which was the ideal thing to do because it would be a separate unit with a heavy tacking that's done which springs in it would be done off the rock and as you can see on this rocker it has very thin rails and a lot of the heavy tagging really can't be done on this however that didn't stop some upholsterer from at some point to do that as you can see these Lodge holes in finished wood from coil springs at that treatment we're not going to do that again because client paid to have a little wood work done in addition to this bad thing they came over the edge and they tacked to the front of the wood so what we're going to try to do is restore it we're not going to be able to do coil springs we don't want to attach too much to this we're going to try to make it look as original as possible client you know only has a certain budget on this so it's up to me is the upholster the challenge is try to make this look right it is going to be an upholstered seats not going to have Springs not going to be a drop-in unit but let's let's stop and we'll show you how how we do something okay so the first step in our restoration of the arts and crafts Branka is to web the top not the bottom we're webbing the top we're going to try to take a real low impact approach to this the frame has already been damaged like I said in the introduction so we're going to try to work with what we have so the less intrusive way to do it would be from the top so we're going to start doing that now webbing now this is a seat webbing it's a jute webbing it's strong it's going to support a body and what we're going to do is start from the battery although it's not even the back rails always the design because the back rail technically is stronger than the front rail the reason for that is it's a small area so we're going to do is stable course a staple a new minute staple gun really I don't like to use it all the time especially on older furniture it certainly is got is going to do less damage to the frame then you know big tax if week fourteen ounce tax so we do is we secure the back we're going to use our pronged closed webbing stretcher we're going to put that in here we're going to stretch and we're going to make sure that that is about drum tight and we're going to staple the front I'm going to release the webbing stretch up and I shop here at scissors we're going to cut it close probably about an inch and a half away staples and then we're going to staple that back you don't have to remind people how to be careful these staples ninety pounds of pressure you wouldn't want one of those in your fender we've done is we've put three webbings back to front stretching to the front and then side to side with foot and webbings in and we're alternating we'll go in under over under and then alternating the weave here and I'll show you the last one this is the optimal we optimized the strength of the seat when we weave it in other words that will look like a lawn chair that most people are familiar with we're going to do now is I'm kind of because this is over this one's going to be under this is under this will be over this is over this will be under we're going to do is come over to this point and we're going to staple this down use the Winx treasure to stretch this out and then we're going to go right into the next segment which is going to be Birla what we're done with the webbing again this is the less intrusive strongest way to stop the seat on a rocket attacks and crafts very delicate I would call it a lady's rocker now what we've done is success we're successful here we've done a good scene oh we need to do is cover this with burlap and the idea is to twofold there one you strengthening the seat the other is that you're filling in these holes so that your padding doesn't fall through that or here's a check a bone all the way to the top of the to the fabric so let me get that burlap the burlap you stop the back also and the best thing to do is start with the fault you fold it go so the next step the second step is to put roll out over the webbing and this is doing two things this is strengthening the seed overall it's also more importantly filling in these holes okay those holes are important to fill in and the burlap is perfect for that so what we're going to do is we're going to start on the back with a fold is get a good fold and we're going to staple that on the back okay fold should be about an inch okay stop opposite side which is in this case is the front what we do is this is your stretch side I'm going to cut this down just a little bit if you were going to cut this from the roll you cut it about three inches bigger than the area so this was a seaside scrap I like to use a good piece of burlap sometimes I like to use try to cancer as much as we can okay so this is the open side of the stretch side stretch staple stretch staple staples now one side you can use is the fold side which will use this side as the fold side I'm not going much of a stretching but now this is where I make it up this is the stretch side you cannot fold and staple and stretch all okay so now that we have our lap on we're going to go to the next step and the next step is to put an edge roll on this this is an edge roll comes in it comes in at least three different sizes and you actually could make more sizes if you wanted to but what determines the size of this roll is how big the pieces a lot of people forget that a sofa for instance would take a bigger role it's called a fox edging and then you get down to a finger roll which is the smallest roll and this is about the middle and this would go the best with this with this particular chair and it's just your eye that tells you that we're going to do is show you how to do this it just to be put on the top like I said but just slightly over the edge even what the edge doesn't do what we want it to do which is we're taking the curse off this edge here from the fabric for the fabric would wear around that in no time so what we're going to do is write like that and then if we get it secured on that and we can cut it to here and stretch it and then finish tack and show you what I mean by that and if you were doing this at home you'd be doing this way with you can do this pot with tax or you could do anything with tax it's just that staples are a little bit less intrusive on a small frame like this very delicate frame so we have a yardstick back here stopper for rocking and go like this safety first and then in addition I would advise anybody to be careful doing this because you come in it the opposite way but this really tightens the edge roll up so we don't want it to move at all really stationary because if it moves it's going to move under the fabric and that's good not to look well with the fabric so ultimately we want a nice-looking piece of furniture that you can sit on a thousand times now that we have a edging roll around oh yeah the next step is batting batting going to do a post World War two batting on a chair that is pre-world War two but that's okay I mean we're trying to duplicate what originally was there and sometimes the the post-world War two materials are the best way although we are going to use a rubberized towards here and that's actually not our next step our very next step is to kind of put a buffer between the rubberized toys here which is this is a full layer of triple-a cotton we're just going to put in there without this you're going to have an air pocket in there and that's not good we want this to be comfy and to last a good long time so just that little knot that will that will give us what we need and we're just going to put this in what this will do is this will give us an air pocket that just the oomph that we need about it it's so important so maybe you want it is that you want to give it some light just going to staple this down actually going to go to a big-ass table with this we're using half-inch I mean 3/8 I'm going to go to a half-inch staple now if you are doing taps you use big tips you use 45 angle it upward we don't have much work do much good in there challenge just going to do a mini on the side after that put a little bit more cotton in there okay see we're trying to do is build this out quail like like the the coil springs would have done the second time it was opposed to the first time so we had to drop in unit and then with flat Springs with the wealth around the top almost looked like a cushion that was on that the second time they came along they put coil springs that crown the seat kind of restricted to that because of the damage to the wood and we're not restoring that part of it so what we're trying to do is duplicate that crown without putting those heavy Springs attached to the frame okay so we're going to just we're going to do this quickly this doesn't require much you better this the inside of that little fox edging okay and then the next step we're going to take piece of 1 inch foam and we're going to go right over this 1 inch foam is right here and this doesn't go to get stretched very much so I'm going to do is show you how to staple and withstand staple vision we have to come over the edge here just over the edge and we're going to be stapling right about here actually happy with the way this padded out whatever when I'm left with is I'm just getting a hint of a crown I kept to the shape of the seat I didn't overdo it now the third time this was upholstered he came to us with this big pad a four-inch piece of foam and just pretty much nothing else piece of wood attached to the bottom and I knew even from a photograph that there was something wrong here as you can see this seat proportionally looks right I mean it's as close to the original design as we're going to get it and I'm very happy with that and we did it without really taking heavy hammer into this frame as you can see it's very delicate so really the next step is we're going to put a little bit more cotton on here exactly another layer of cotton and that is a buffer between the the foam and the fabric and is essential it that you put a buffer in between fabric on all fabric somewhat of a buffer you can also use Jake on the cotton is nice again because the cotton comes off the Roll cut it with your hands you lay it over and you also cut this with your hands there's no more tacking you don't to tack this bonded Dacron if you're going to use bond of Dacron you'd have to tack it again we don't want to do that so that's pretty much needed you know you cut your corners like so you cut you cut around your post you get down hand you Pat it down and then you trim it and it always looks like you under under trim the cotton this is a there's a lot of those nuances in upholstery that really hit you have to be taught by a master upholsterer to know most people would trim it right over the phone but what you're doing here is you're duplicating the tension of the fabric and pull and then you release it looks like you've done it wrong but you've got right and I'm going to do that all the way around and because stretching fabric is such a not within the out of upholstery we're going to save that for separate YouTube on how to stretch fabrics we don't want I just wanted to show you all at home what type of fabric this was going to have and I think my fabric I kind of like fabric that the client picked which brought it to us I think it really goes the arts and crafts design of the chair and I'm just going to put that all let's show you this is actually a cot velvet and of course all velvet you have to make sure that you're going in the direction that the velvet always should be smooth to the front the inaudible veil upholsteries it's the opposite and I just wanted to show you guys at home and like I said stretching is a whole nother lesson we're going to do that on another piece this is a very difficult piece to show stretching on it being a rocker but there's the final pretty much the final product thank you once again for viewing you

Channel: Broadway Upholstery School

Views: 114,194

Rating: 4.783505 out of 5

Keywords: Upholstery, on, broadway, teaches, chair, padding, tutorial, art, how, to, sewing, couch, fabric

Id: h4lFEM3Y53A

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2012