Intro to diamond tufting

today we are talking about one of my very favorite styles to teach which is diamond tufting or deep button tufting now though you'll often hear people use diamond tufting to describe anything that has a button set into it what we're really talking about is this distinctive process where the padding is clear and the button pulls down nice and deep which is going to create that distinctive pattern of folds in our fabric there's two reasons why I really like to teach Diamond tufting number one because so much of what we do in upholstery is a lot harder than it looks and people don't always recognize the skill and experience involved however diamond tufting is universally recognized as a very skilled and a very custom process number two I like to teach it because it's not quite as hard as it looks which is not to say that it's easy but even a relative beginner can achieve a surprising amount of success if what we're tufting into is a relatively straightforward layout and a forgiving fabric the main ingredients for success are gonna be good planning and a lot of patience so let's set aside our finished sample board and I'm gonna back up and show you where we started to plan this particular tufted project so here's what we are using for our tufting a sample is just a board tufting sometimes goes into webbing or into other foundations but since we're just really practicing this is gonna work great for us for marking and planning and tufting so my board is 23 by 19 and the first thing I have to decide is exactly how big I want my diamonds to be which I have mine marked out but I usually start what I'm thinking about it I'm just gonna start by laying out button molds to see visually what I think looks good and as long as I'm just using those molds I can push them around to my heart's content this is an itty bitty board so I'm using itty bitty number 22 buttons and it's gonna really change the look depending on how large I go a whole small I go there aren't a lot of hard and fast rules for this but generally we want our diamonds to be taller than they are in width which is because some fabrics can act really smarmy if you get them on that true bias and they'll want to stretch instead of fold although depending on the fabric if it has a nice backing and it's stable sometimes you can get away with that and it looks really good but we have off to dev a taller diamond and this distance here is about half of the distance here so visually that's going to give us a nice balance but really the bottom line is if it looks good it is good so let me clear those out and I'll show you once I decided how I liked my spacing where we ended up so we ended up with a four and a half inch wide diamond and a six and a quarter inch tall diamond so that's gonna fill our space nicely and once I have that math I laid out very carefully to make sure that I was straight and I was square my tufting my end result is only going to be as tidy as my prep work is so take your time to make sure you like your spacing you get everything really laid out well and I like we're gonna have to get a needle through here later so I like myself a nice big drill bit that's the one I usually use you can use something a little smaller this is a 5/16 and that's gonna be easy for me to find from the front with a great big needle so once I have this this same math needs to be transferred to a piece of foam we're gonna use 2 inch which is I would say a functional minimum for tufting in order to create enough depth to create our folds 2 to 3 inches of foam is what we're gonna want to work with so I'm gonna cut a piece of foam two inches thick half inch bigger than my board with his exact same layout accurately marked on there I'm not gonna take the time to show you all the measuring and marking and drilling on the board and the foam because it really just amounts to so much careful measuring but I do want to show you the tool that I use for cutting the foam layer which is this beautiful little hole saw from fabric supply made by CS osborne and you can see on here it's a number 22 which coral lates to the buttons that we're choosing to use they do come in different sizes so if you go to a bigger button you want to select a bigger cutter but this guy just goes right into our cordless drill and then with a spray is silicon we're gonna be able to drill nice clean holes right into our foam and I do always like to have a scrap underneath there so I don't bottom out and wreck my nice tool you can see what a nice clean job all right here is our board all prepped up and ready to go so the wood you already saw now we've added our 2 inch foam with that same pattern carefully marked and all the holes drilled if you get in really close you can see if I look down each hole I should be able to see the corresponding hole on my board very careful that everything lines up I also want to take a look at the edge where for each of my exterior buttons can you see we have marked and cleared a slit in the padding both the foam and my batting and that's gonna help me set each of my folds on my outside row of buttons you'll see that when we get back around I don't need I don't need a slit here because that's an inside button but each of these I do so once my batting is glued on I'm gonna clear both those slits and all my holes so I'm ready for my buttons to travel in and create our fold pattern so that's our padding all set let's go take a look at what we're gonna plan on our fabric so how much fabric do we need for our tufted sampler I want to show you how we're gonna figure that out I'm gonna start as if this were a simple slip seat like a dining chair where we're just gonna measure over the top and figure out how much we need to go board the board which if I just gonna pull it around from edge to edge I'm at 27 now I usually add on at least two inches per side just for my candle to pull on so 27 plus 2 plus 2 gives me 31 if this sample was not tufted but because it is tufted I have to add in for each of those buttons and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find my long row 1 2 3 4 5 and multiply that times the depth of my foam so 5 times 2 gives me 10 inches that I need to add on from 31 all the way up to 41 my piece is gonna be 41 inches wide it never hurts to add a little extra along the edges if that makes you nervous but our minimum fabric should be 41 inches wide now let me show you what I selected for us to tuft with today that fabric selection is gonna be really important if you're new to tufting you want to use something that's really friendly and this is gonna be I dug through our remnants and I came up with this which I liked for two reasons number one it's gonna be really forgiving about a needle going in and coming out we're not gonna get a puncture wound from that needle like we would with say Oh a chance or a vinyl or a leather which means we can move our buttons almost indefinitely we can reposition to our hearts content and you may end up doing that with tufting the other thing is that I have really nice easy to spot grain that warp and that we've are gonna help me stay straight as I'm putting in my rose and I'm wrestling the bulk of that fabric it's gonna be easy for me to see if I'm wandering around and going crooked so those are the two things I look for when they help students select a fabric for their first tufted project now let me show you the back this is what I've marked on the back to get us started I am using a sharpie which you definitely should not but I wanted you to be able to see it pencil or chalk for you guys but I want to mark a center and I want to mark my top roll which has four buttons and the way I came up with the distance between those again is my board has marked four and a half inches apart and I have a two inch foam so these should be six and a half inches apart and it's very important and my first role be very straight and very even where I'm going to tend to get into trouble by the time I get to my second third fourth row if say this one was a half inch short and this one had an extra half inch way down here I'm gonna come up with some uneven tough so if this first roll goes and even then I've really paved the way to hopefully have a nice even tufting result let's grab our first row of buttons and I'm gonna show you what that looks like okay so to start our first row of buttons these are the buttons I have they're just the little 22s we talked about they're actually in a contrast fabric which is just because I had these buttons made from custom workroom conference so I thought they'd look kind of cute on there we need those and then I have nylon tufting twine from fabric supply nice and strong just about a yard don't have to be too particular about that I'm gonna thread my button to start and then take both ends of that through my button needle also from fabric supply these come in all different kind of links this is actually one of the shorter ones they make plenty longer ones if you need to get into something that's really deep like a frame but this one's going to be plenty for our little two inch foam and board so once I have my button threaded I'm gonna flip this back so I can see where I had one of those first buttons marked and just carefully find my way through there and through my corresponding hole in the board I don't need to worry too much about positioning at this point I just have to make sure that I hit those points and that I pull this all the way in to my board and can you already see it looks like a little belly button you can already see how that's really gonna force us to have some pleading in there it's not gonna pleat by itself but the depth of that foam is the reason that we get a tuft I'll show you what I'm doing back here I could tie this off but since we're working into a board I'm just gonna do the faster thing and I'm gonna staple this into place now if you anticipate moving buttons a lot you may want to tie that off so that you can move them around but if I had to move this button it wouldn't be terrible I just be pulling those staples out and starting over let's put on my next once the same process I have my button you have my twine once I have my button threaded I'm gonna take both of those ends through my needle find the mark in my fabric in the corresponding hole in my board and take that through to the back grab my twines pull my fabric end and anchor it down I'm gonna put my next two buttons in and then we will talk about row number two [Music] with only our first row in this thing tends to look like a giant mess which is why I like to have that first row in our center marked just to make sure that we do in fact know at this point we're nice and even on our second row now we're gonna start to work in our pattern and this is where I'm gonna be able to use my Center to follow down and make sure that I'm starting nice and straight into my second row I don't have to go by feel for how far to go in there but we'll get a feel for it as we go so if I just go ahead and just stick these buttons in here this is the kind of pattern I'm gonna get which you know we don't love that that doesn't look so great it's it's close but no cigar so I do actually have to get in here as I work and I have to use my fingers to create each of those folds where I want them I do have to manage that which is why this is a skilled craft and why we charge this when we do it by the button because each individual button has to be set by hand but I can get in there I can set my pleats some people like to use a regulator I just tend to use my fingers whatever works for you and I'm gonna follow my midline to make sure if I start to go crooked right here I'm gonna have trouble in my next couple rows I got to make sure I'm staying straight but that one looks pretty good to me now I tend to tell students don't judge it too much until you get into like Row 3 nothing is gonna look perfect yet so here go again let's read my button thread my needle would be a good place to use a use a buddy if you have a kid who likes to help out at the shop they can certainly thread your buttons and your needle for you and then down when I go through where I want my button to be pull that in and we have our first half a toast now is where I can start to use the green of my fabric this really should be perfect diamond tufting is like a math problem right I should be able to follow my grain straight over from here and straight down from the center of this diamond and that should be my perfect spot if you pull off an old piece of tufting should see hopefully a very even pattern of holes and folds if it was done well so that should be a pretty good spot for our button but if it wasn't the perfect spot what's nice is that I can pull that button out and I can just refold it if you embrace the idea that this is not going to be a fast process it actually be kind of meditative so in goes on the button sure we like where that's pulling in and anchor it off go over here we'll finish this side [Music] [Music] you might be noticing this can actually put a lot of wear and tear on your pinkie because as we're pulling that thread is really hitting right on that little finger now I have hands like a Yeti so I tend not to worry about it but you may want to get some gloves if you find that your hands are really sensitive this is going to get them all right off to the other side wrestling in our folds [Music] [Music] [Music] there's our two rows in we're just gonna be leaving our edges for now and focusing on our diamond pattern so the next row is quite exciting because we finally are gonna see our full diamond patterns and I want to point out here all my folds are folded down and that's gonna be the next row as well I'm gonna fold those down because if I was working on something like a sofa back or a headboard we wouldn't want any of those pleats to face up how they could catch dust and hair and they certainly do if you've ever come across an upward facing pleat you'll see how much dust has settled in there so as I work I'm just gonna make all my folds face towards the bottom of my sample board so let's go back in here and we'll start towards the center so I don't have a button right on that center line this time so now I don't have a line to match like how really is the grain of my fabric to follow down to find my next row now if I was doing like a whole restaurant or a bunch of upholstered walls if I was doing anything that had more than a couple hairs dude a little sample board it makes sense for me to come in here and just figure out each button as I go but if I got this perfect and I took it apart I could mathematically measure where every single button is gonna be placed and if I was gonna do multiples I may go to the trouble to figure that out and then mark them so I didn't have to figure out each and every button the hard way so just keep that in mind if you're doing multiple sometimes it really makes sense to do a sample and streamline your process a little bit so here goes my button in here and I'm looking for my tension here should be enough that this is snug but I'm not pulling a dent into my tufting I really want my fabric to go up and over and keep its fullness over the top so that to me looks like about where I want to be let's get a button in there and there is a relatively small sweet spot between to lose and to tight and the only way to really figure it out is to work with enough fabric and enough tufting every textile has its own hand and you can't be afraid to just push materials around and see what they want to do for you but oh isn't that gonna be satisfying I tell you what I usually keep my string as long while I'm working in case I need to reposition anything but because we're stapling these I'm gonna go ahead and trim them and get them out of our way if I need to move a button I'll just cut a new string seems like that's gonna be a lot easier to work her own but if I'm tying into say the back of her sofa where I have that webbed and I'm gonna be tying knots anyway then I wouldn't trim them until I was good insure that I was done all right let's go on the other side and get our next diamond in he can't be I would say too dainty with the fabric he can't be afraid to really manipulate it around we're not gonna wreck it and if we wreck it we'd rather wreck it while we're working on it then find out later that it was so delicate we couldn't work with it so don't be afraid to push around and see what it's gonna do see if I can follow my grain this way lots of checks and balances to keep myself honest that way this way see where that puts us I want to match that pleats a little bit I think that's about where we want to be all my pleats are facing down [Music] see the part of class that I like cuz it starts to get nice and quiet and everybody starts to see where all this chaos it's gonna be turned into nice tidy order though not by itself and certainly not in a hurry gonna get all my pleats just how I want them straight here straight here straight here both my folds facing down [Music] one more in this role one thing that happens sometimes people they get down to the third fourth fifth row and all of a sudden they'll discover like well I have a giant fold here and I have nothing nothing to fold in on the other side what's going on and what's usually going on is that that mistake started two rows back where if this was a little bit uneven that's going to multiply as I work through my rows and all of a sudden I can discover that I just have way too little or way too much fabric in one of my folds but as long as this roll was even and I'm nice and straight working my way down we should be coming up with more or less the same amount of fabric in any fold no that's because this is a nice flat straight project which is really the place to learn tufting a bench a simple headboard there's a lot of places to use tufting that aren't terribly complicated but you don't want to start on a piece that's got a whole bunch of curves for example it's gonna be much harder to get an even pattern on so figure out the simple stuff first [Music] our first three rows of buttons are in there looking pretty good we're gonna kind of cruise through our next couple rows is a great place to pop in your headphones let's just some music there's so much more podcast and just get in a groove of figuring out each of those folds let me wrap up our last two rows and then we'll talk about we're gonna do the rest of this [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right all our buttons are in and this is where we are at that takes care of our Tufts we still have to work in all our edges so I'm gonna show you how I prefer to do that but but different people do have sort of different preferred order of operations so play around with it a little bit but hopefully this will give you a jumping-off point I'm gonna start off on my top and what I like to do especially when I can see that grain so have a pretty good indication of where my middles going to come in is that I'm gonna set some staples in there first I'm gonna set the middle of my Tufts and tension wise kind of like we looked at the Diamonds I don't want to yank so hard that I'm gonna threaten to pull out my fold I just want to Snug it up but I do want to low my fabric to ride up and over the foam safety glasses please and thank you and I'll just throw a staple in there per roll make sure that I'm keeping an eye on my grain there's gonna a for the center and they have kind of as I was tufting I was sort of we're sort of just tugging on these and making sure that they were gonna work okay here we go but this too can often involve a fair amount of doing and undoing and reworking and repositioning as we sort of see where everything ends up that looks pretty straight I'm looking up here that my tension looks even a lot lots of dimensions to consider so once my centers are anchored I know that whatever's left has to somehow work into my fold and I've seen I've seen different philosophies and how to fold this in some people like to pull the center and actually pull to pleats in I really prefer to try to get one big pleat with all my bulk in there so I'm gonna work with both my layers a little bit and I want to see that this fold is coming straight up from my button and get in there wrestle around a little bit okay and maybe we'll staple this to within an inch of its life in case I need to move it but let me show you if you can see it an angle you can see that there's a little more fullness here than there is it dips down a little bit into my fold so I do want to see that sort of pleasing Boop a little bit of biscuit look there and I'm gonna put all my folds I'm gonna lay them all facing the same direction so these are all going right my sides will all go down just like my diamonds did let me get this next one folded in [Music] look what happened back here my first staple these ones look okay but my first staple over here now looks a little bit loose so to pop that out and just retention it [Music] that's our top row roughed-in I'm not gonna do anything with the corners yet because that's really the last place I want to go so I'm just done to about here and I say done with like air quotes because there's still a chance that I may rework some of that when I get in here and see what my corner wants to do but from this point I want to go down to the bottom and do the same thing as I did up here and then the center of my sides get all my straight pleat set and then we'll wrap up with our corners so let me catch up those edges and then we'll talk about how we're going to finish [Music] [Applause] [Music] you what I'm gonna do on this is I'm gonna finish up my side I'm gonna see if I can get to like one tidy straight pleat up here which is going to be a nice match for my pleats on top of course there's all different kind of ways that you can finish that but let's try this so I'm smoothing out from my pleat to my corner reposition any staples if I need to to smooth that tension in and as I come out to this corner not only did i tension but I moved my staples out towards the edge I'm gonna get in here and I'm gonna trim people can be kind of kind of cautious about trimming and that's fine you get their little bites but if you have too much fabric in there you really are going to struggle fold all this in there that gets to be quite a lot so I can find the edge of my board and let's say we're gonna trim we leave about an inch about an inch past the board in and I like let me show you and I like on my corners I like to do like a little corner pleat in the back that's just gonna help me sort of control if I just fold this down that's doing whatever it wants it has to go somewhere so if I fold that part first just get one staple in here maybe we'll even retrain that to keep it tidy then I should have an easier time managing this but every fabric is gonna behave a little bit differently and everybody's hands really work just a little bit differently so if you see some place that everything wants to be happy you can lean into that [Music] our board is all set now every tufting project is really gonna be a little bit different but I hope that this gave you some guidelines and just some tips on how you can start planning and executing your diamond tufting project with hopefully more efficiency in success if you enjoyed this video please do subscribe so that you see new content as it becomes available and a huge thank you to our education sponsor fabric supply in Minneapolis for making this free content possible have a great day [Music]

Channel: The Funky Little Chair

Views: 430,609

Rating: 4.87744 out of 5

Keywords: diy upholstery, upholstery education, tufting, tufted, diamond tufting, deep button tufting, how to, how to upholster, upholstered headboard

Id: hQPKae0wBSw

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 10 2018