Reupholster Dining Room Chairs with Velvet Fabric | Thrift Diving

i've been wanting to reupholster these chairs for so long so that's what we're going to do in today's video and i found these chairs about five or six years ago they were literally 20 at the thrift store and originally they were 199 each from pier one so that was a huge deal you can see the one on the left had been changed but i didn't do a very good job of it so today i think we're going to do a better job so today we're going to be using the aero fastener pt50 this is sponsored by them so a big thanks for supplying that but we're also going to need a compressor this is something i've used for a lot of other projects and it goes up to 120 so you can use it for a lot of home use the fabric washable velvet love this color and i'm going to use some of this leftover dacron if you remember the wingback chair that i never quite finished this is leftover so we're going to use some of that and also i did go to a professional upholster and get some buttons professionally made because i wanted this to look good so you're also going to need some twine and you're going to need a big upholstery needle because we're going to be doing some tufting today one of the challenges that i had with this chair before was trying to get a straight row of these decorative tacks so we're going to use this little jig here with some cardboard and some of the decorative tacks so you will need those as well this chair had some pieces that would have to be sewn together to make the cover so i needed my sewing machine my bobbin and some thread you're also going to need a tack remover staple remover this thing comes in handy and it's nearly impossible to remove the old fabric without using this and even when you kind of dig in there it can be tough and it just takes a lot of patience but be mindful of not destroying this fabric because you're going to use this as the pattern for your new fabric it's also a good idea to see if there's anything that you can salvage from the old project i thought that i'd be able to save these furniture tacks but i couldn't by the time i got them all off they were bent so i just got some new ones it's also good to know which pieces go on first which piece goes on second and which piece goes on third and so on and so forth because this will help you determine how to put your chair back together so take a lot of pictures and a lot of videos before you start dismantling it you'll also need to decide if you're going to replace the foam or the cushions in the chair these ones were in okay condition i didn't think i needed to replace that so i just left it i pulled the buttons out and then took about 10-15 minutes to make sure that i understood completely how this was supposed to go on the chair it's a different story when you're dealing with making a whole new pattern and now you have to fit this fabric to the chair so don't skip this step just make sure that you spend some time just making sure that you know how this is supposed to fit for the next step i used a seam ripper to remove all the seams and all the pieces of the existing fabric it took a long time to do because there was a lot of pieces but i also used a marker to label the pieces because while i was working on cutting this out i had to make sure i didn't lose sight of where things were in the pattern so i had to make sure that i could remember how it was all fit together and this fabric may look familiar do you remember a chair that i did some time ago it was beautiful it turned out really well so i thought this would be a great fabric to put on the back of the chair well i ended up cutting it a little bit too small or at least i thought it was too small and then i didn't have enough fabric to cut two more pieces so what i would recommend is to always add a little bit of extra seam allowance onto your pattern that you're creating because you want to give yourself a little bit of wiggle room just in case you are off just by a little bit so more fabric is definitely better than not enough fabric and the main fabric i'm using is called krypton velvet guys this fabric is amazing yes you saw liquids just slide off of this fabric we need that in households with kids you can find the link down below and where you can get this it's about 30 a yard and i think if you have kids pets this is a great fabric to have one thing to keep in mind is when you're cutting out pieces of fabric you want to take into account whether the fabric has a nap in ap and that's sort of the direction of the fabric right so if you run your hand across a velvet one direction is going to be very smooth and the other direction is very rough so keep that in mind when you're cutting pieces for your chair and make sure that they all match up another thing too is you might have a pattern or like with the damask fabric there is clearly a side that's up and aside that's down so keep that in mind when you're cutting your pieces out also make sure that you've got your seam allowances here my seam allowance tends to like fold under you see there so i'm using a ruler trying to keep those edges nice and straight i didn't want to cut it too small just a couple of tips for you so because i was doing two chairs i wanted to make sure that i did everything at the same time there's nothing worse than doing one complete project and then you have to go back and do the same exact thing for another project so if you're doing two chairs or more chairs try to do the same step for each of the chairs at the same time now this is the old fabric that i pulled off the nasty fabric from the old chair i labeled those and i also labeled these pieces with the numbers and made sure i knew exactly what step i was doing and what pieces would go together when you're pinning your fabric try to only pin it in the seam allowance you don't want to get holes in your fabric so i did a just a little run through here of the fabric figured out that everything was good to go with sewing and then i did it piece by piece and again i didn't do all 14 pieces and then go back and do all 14. i did piece one and two and then did the second part for piece one and two so that i can do both chairs at the same time and i was left with this for the first one and two pieces and then i joined piece number three so there were 14 pieces and it started to get a little difficult because i wasn't sure if if i was doing it properly i just hoped that this thing would fit and it was a little scary when i started seeing what this was looking like i'm like oh my gosh is it an elephant like what is it but again using that old pattern and looking to see how those pieces fit together help me to stay sort of in line with where everything needed to be for matching up so i made sure that i kept the old pieces and as i was done with like piece number eight i made sure that i pinned it to the old pieces you also want to use a half inch seam allowance i did use 5 8 of an inch and i had to go back and trim all of those excess edges and it just created extra time and i wouldn't have had to do that if i'd gone with half an inch so just make sure that you use that okay so for the seat there were three pieces that i needed for the seat and i matched all of those up sewed them together tried to make sure that they were straight you see here i've got a little v cut on the bottom part and that's so that i could match up the center of the fabrics and you can see there's not very much padding on the back there is some foam but i really wanted to give this more of a luxurious feel so i thought maybe a layer of dacron would help and you'll notice here on the sides i've got some relief cuts this is so the dacron can fit to the chair because if it's just one big square it's not going to fit very neatly so whenever you're going around curves make some relief cuts so that your fabric and your dacron can just bend with that curve and you'll see here that the existing buttons had left an indentation and that was the perfect location to put the new buttons so using the upholstery needle it's threaded with twine the button is on the other side of the fabric and pulling that through you'll then be able to see that the button is now in place this is where it can get hard on the hands because to get that tuft you have to be able to pull tight and hold it into position and then staple it in place and so that's what i did with the pt50 you'll want to do maybe four staples and then turn your your twine to the other side and give it a few more staples this is only the second time that i've ever attempted tufting and the first time was when i did this chair five years ago the scary part is when you're first putting these buttons in you see all this extra fabric under your hand and you're worried that it's going to look like a hot mess and that's what my concern was but i just kept going working my way from one button to the next if you are starting from scratch make sure that your buttons are evenly spaced again i have the benefit of having the indentation there so i didn't have to guess where the buttons should be they were already there so i didn't have to you know make this up but you can also use a black marker and mark where your buttons have to go to make sure that they're even make sure that your buttons have even tension on them you don't want one of the buttons to pop off after you've completed the chair and then you have to tear everything out in order to do it over again so make sure you've got it evenly tensioned and once all the buttons are in place then you can start fitting all the other fabric around the chair so you see that i'm tucking in the part closer to the bottom now this is where i wish i would have had a little bit more fabric on the bottom so that i could have pulled it because that's how you get rid of all the wrinkles and i also did a little bit of stuffing here with the coconut fiber to try to fill in some of these places where i thought you know there's just a little bit too much wrinkles here and i can't seem to pull the fabric tight enough in order to get rid of those so i did do a little bit of stuffing filling in and then pulling as tight as i can to get rid of those and you just want to make sure that it's not too lumpy so try to break up some of that stuffing some of the coconut fiber and then pull it tight when i did an upholstery class a couple years ago one of the things that i learned from him is to always pull your fabric tight and to secure it in the middle so like here if i'm securing this fabric in the middle then i can start to pull the excess fabric to the corners where it can then be secured and that's what i did so i worked my way up from the bottom and then secured the middle and then just tried to pull as tight as i could and you know the next day my fingers were actually hurting and they were starting to change colors because of the dye in the fabric because i was pulling so hard so this is not an easy task when you're trying to get out tufting wrinkles especially when you're sort of a newbie at this and yes those are my christmas pjs typically i don't work on projects at night but this one was really really fun and so after the kids were in bed it was time to come down in my pajamas and finish up whatever the task was for the day so the corners i just did sort of just a little fold over trying to keep it attractive and neat and then it was time to move on to the seat you'll see here that i've got a little bit of scrap fabric that i sewed onto the back now you could make your fabric a little longer the only thing is is that you're using more of your good fabric you don't want to do that so just sew on a piece of scrap fabric and this gives you something to pull when you're trying to get a nice tight fit underneath the chair to get around the legs i added one staple to the center and then pulled tight with my left hand then used the scissors and created just a little snip and secured it with one staple so i'll do that on the other side as well and then that fabric that's around the leg will be tucked up underneath but in the meantime i'll keep pulling making sure that everything is snug and adding staples as i go you want that fabric around the legs to be nice and snug no wrinkles so pull it tight and then staple now when i cut out the other pieces of the other fabric for the back it didn't seem like it was big enough so this one i decided to make a little large i can trim away anything that i don't need and then once i cut it out it was time to apply it to the back now i put one single staple in the middle and then pulled tight on both ends and secured it then i flipped the chair upside down and pulled it down as tight as i could and put a single staple right there in the middle and i think that's one of the most important tips that i learned in the upholstery class that i took a couple of years ago is that if you secure it in the middle and then pull towards the sides you tend to get a better outcome you're going to have less wrinkles it's going to be smooth and again i needed to do this to work this fabric around those legs so by pulling smooth and snipping i was able to secure it with one staple and then do the same for the other side again just making a little snip there and once i had that tail then i could flip that underneath and then staple it into place so this is kind of new to me i've not really done that many upholstery projects so this was fun to experiment and i think it's it's why it took me so long is because i was trying out all of these techniques that i remembered from upholstery class just really wanted this to turn out great and i think it looked pretty good actually once the bottom was secure and was looking good i pulled the sides as tight as i could and applied staples right along the edge of that fabric hopefully in locations where the furniture tacks could disguise the staples i put some relief cuts here along the edge or along the curve so that i could curve that fabric without any wrinkles and then it was time for the furniture tacks i used cardboard and i thought i'd put them all in at one time like this that didn't work very well but the cardboard was helpful because i was able to put them half an inch apart and one quarter of an inch up from the bottom so there's a link to a video that i will link down below to so that you can see how this was done it was helpful for me in order to get these on properly if you have any mistakes just remove them reapply it you can also use a furniture tack strip some people swear by them okay so the next part after getting the furniture tacks in was to figure out am i going to refinish the legs or am i going to just use a repair marker i decided to use a repair marker because i've used these before they do a pretty good job not perfect but pretty good job of disguising any worn parts of the chair and i added a little bit of furniture polish so this was a good solution for me i didn't want to have to you know refinish those as well so this is what it looked like before guys beautiful chairs but horrible fabric and falling apart and now these things are so gorgeous i thought that i would use them as dining room chairs i put them in my dining room when my mom saw it she said why are you putting these in the dining room you know the kids are going to destroy them well she doesn't know that i have krypton fabric but i think she's right i think these have to be more of a centerpiece so i'm going to use them probably in my family room but again off limits to kids they cannot use these at all these are for me and hubby not for children and i told them no picking at the furniture tax either you cannot remove those but these chairs turned out great considering that this is only really the first true time that i've done tufting i like how they turned out there's some wrinkles but i think that's normal if you're using velvet and you know i think the more projects you do the more you you improve so don't be afraid to give a project like this a chance make some mistakes learn all you can and just keep going you know it doesn't have to be perfect it's for your house so if you enjoyed this project give it a thumbs up be sure to come back and see another project that i'm gonna do with fabric and wood and power tools and be sure to like this video leave a comment and come back again and subscribe big thanks to arrow fastener which is sponsoring this video and i will see you next project you

Channel: Thrift Diving

Views: 45,392

Rating: 4.9698057 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, Thrift Diving, thrift stores, home improvement, crafting, thriftdiving, velvet, arrow fastener staple gun, reupholstering a chair, upholstering a chair, upholstering dining chairs, crypton velvet review, thrifted home decor, thrifted transformations, upholstery tutorial chair, upholstery tutorial videos, dining chair upholstery tutorial, thrift haul home decor, reupholster dining room chair fabric, tufted chair makeover, diy tufted dining room chairs, tufted velvet chairs

Id: iagoqzTYRBw

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020