She had quickly spray painted the frame black (I don't have a photo of the true before- sorry!) and stapled some black & white fabric over the upholstery for my sister-in-law Caroline's apartment. After Caroline graduated from college, the chair was without a home and somehow I was able to inherit it.
Of course, I wanted to do a full reupholster...new foam, new fabric, etc. I also needed to have the cane arms repaired. I researched caning and it seemed WAY to hard for even me to try, so I found a local guy to fix it for me. Quick and easy.
I have never attempted to reupholster anything before in my life. So let me preface the next steps by saying I am a total amateur, and I know a professional could do a much better job. But here's what I did...and it cost me next to nothing:
First I removed the stapled fabric from Brenda and you can see the original upholstery:
The next part was MUCH more time consuming. I had to remove the next layer of fabric and all.the.nails. This took forever. The nails were never ending....I don't know how old the chair was, but the nails were ancient.
Once the fabric was off, I studied the foam to see how I could replace it. I basically just took it all out, and cut to size a very thick layer of my own. Then, I covered the foam with some scrap burlapy fabric I had lying around to contain it (used this as a muslin, if you will...)
We have a rather small living room, so I knew this chair would be a perfect accent piece and in addition creating another place to sit. I wanted to upholster it in a fun, cheerful fabric. Enter the chevron.
I know, I know. Chevron is overdone these days. I have to admit that I bought the fabric last summer and finally did this project back in August so maybe it was in the peak of the trend....oh well. I still think its a great graphic. As you can see above, I used the original fabric scrap as a template for the new upholstery. I then pulled the fabric as tight as I could and stapled it around the edges with a staple gun. For the seat I just pulled it under and stapled to the bottom.
Once that was complete there was one problem.....the exposed staples.
I thought about buying some pre-made cord in a contrasting gray to make my life easy. But I am overly ambitious and thought if I came this far I should at least try to make my own welt.....
Of course the fabric store I went to didn't have the large cord size I needed...so I bought the smaller cord they had in stock and decided to make a double welt instead. Now this is where things get very amateurish.
I basically just cut the fabric into small strips and sewed them around the cord. Then I sewed the two pieces of cord together to create a double welt. Voila.
Attaching it to the chair was much more difficult. I just used a hot glue gun around the edge and tried my hardest not to let the seams show.
Of course it's nowhere near perfect, but in the end it turned out good enough for me! :)
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