After my fun with the couch, I couldn’t resist reupholstering the chair as well. Our open concept dining/living room is full of bookshelves in dark wood, and Chris said he was feeling kind of claustrophobic. My reading chair upstairs is a brown velvet armchair, and it was contributing to the heaviness in the room. So, I decided to swap chairs and put the matching armchair upstairs. It has a lower back, and will have no skirt and be a light fabric, so I am hopeful that it will make a difference!
As I mentioned before, I have the matching armchair to the couch, also covered in the horrible floral fabric. This time I have taken in-progress photos so you can see how easy it is. This might take a while to load, I apologise!
Here is the chair before. It’s a standard armchair, with a skirt, a t-shaped seat cushion and a fitted back cushion. Lovely floral fabric (gag).
The first step is to remove the skirt. This I accomplished with a screwdriver, a hammer and needlenose pliers. You can use the screwdriver to pry up the seam where the skirt joins the frame, and then rip it up. Then use the pliers to pull out all the staples left behind.
The second step in the way this chair is constructed is to remove the back panel. You can see there is one panel of fabric, and the grey fabric underneath is cambric, a stiff kind of dust barrier. After removing the whole panel of decor fabric, I just followed the seams along the side and top of the back panel of cambric. The purpose of this step is to get at the inside of the frame so you can fasten the fabric coming from the front of the chair and make it look professional and pretty.
Step three is to cover the inner face of the arms. Since I removed the back panel, I can tuck the fabric in behind where the arm meets the back of the chair and staple it to the frame. For the top of the arms, I just stapled in a line following the existing line of piping. As a hint, using fabric with a geometric pattern like this can be a blessing because you can tell at a glance if everything is lined up properly. Conversely, a solic fabric will hide a multitude of sins as well.
Step four you can see I am tucking the arm fabric through from the front to the back I have exposed. Notice I have left the cambric attached at the bottom. This is sheer laziness, because I didn’t feel like removing it completely because I didn’t have to!
Step five, you can see I have finished the inner face of both arms. I have stapled along the top of each arm and down the front, and cut away the excess fabric.
Step six, I have cut a piece of fabric wide enough to cover the front and seat of the chair. I have stapled it to the front underside edge of the chair, and cut release cuts to fit the t-shape where the arms come in. The excess fabric of the Ts gets tucked into the divide where the arm meets the seat, and the ecess fabric is pushed through where the seat bottom meets the seat back and pulled out to the back of the chair.
You can see in this photo the fabric of the arms pulled through, and the fabric of the seat pulled through, and I have stapled it to the frame so it is nice and tight and not going anywhere.
Step 8 is to finish the arms. I have cheated here, because you can buy rolls of that cardboard tape from an upholstery supply store, but I have found that strips of manila file folder folded in half work quite well. What I have done here is cut a piece of fabric large enough to cover the side and top of the arm. What we are doing is trying to make a nice finished edge along the top of the arm where the two pieces of fabric will meet. You put the fabric right side down along the arm, overlapping the seam by an inch or so (make sure your piece is long enough to fold over AND also be stapled to the underside of the frame!). Here I have that nice line of piping to work with as a guide. Put the strip of manila folder over the previous line of staples and butted up to that line of piping and staple it down. What this will do is give you a knife edge along that seam that hides both your original line of staples, plus the fabric you have just attached. Brilliant!
Here you can see that same arm with the fabric folded over. Pretty!
Step 10 is to pull the fabric taut on the side of the arm and staple to the back frame, and do the same for the bottom of the arm. I have left the front to be all floppy, because I have to sew those seams by hand.
Step 11 you can see the arm is looking pretty good. What I have done now is cut a long piece of fabric for the inside back and outside back of the chair. I have tucked the end in where the back meets the seat at the front and stapled it to the frame. I have then stapled it to the top edges of the frame, and flipped the edge over. At this stage, you don’t need access to the guts any more, so I have re-stapled the cambric back in place to the back. Now it looks all neat and tidy.
Step 12, you can see how I am attaching the back. There are many ways to do this. The chair and couch as originally upholstered had a completely separate back panel, but again I am lazy and wanted one single panel wrapping over the back of the chair. What I have done here is folded the edges over so the back panel is the same size as the back, and I am blind-stitching the edges together to make a nice seam. I am sure there are other ways to do this, but this works for me.
Step 13, almost done! I also folded over the fabric at the front of the arms and blind-stitched it down the front of each arm. Again, upholstering isn’t scary, you just have to plan out what you want to do and be methodical. I actually screwed up one of the arms and had to patch it, but luckily the seat cushion will cover that part! Don’t be afraid, you can always fix mistakes. For the arms, I just figured out an aesthetically balanced seam pattern and just folded the raw edges of the fabric over and blind-stitched them in place.
Phew! The carcass is done, so Part 2 will be the cushion making. The chair I kind of rushed, being bored with some of the fiddly bits, so the seat isn’t as smooth or wrinkle free as I would have liked, but that will be covered all the time by the cushion, so the only person that will know is me (er, and all of you).