Upholstery 101

I was raised by an idealist, do-it-yourself kind of mother. I don't think she ever met a project she was afraid to tackle. Mama doesn't believe in paying someone else to do what you can do yourself and she has a pretty firm belief that if they can do it, we can do it. She's also not a perfectionist and a firm believer in teaching your children to be hard workers. My brother, Benjamin, says that that's the attitude that made us painters. Painting was probably one of the first life skills we learned. In fact, I think we were almost grown before it dawned upon us that not everyone painted their house themselves. We've been known to paint rooms on the spur of the moment (see Mom's bedroom in a previous post) and we've gotten pretty fast at it. When we painted our living room (it was a dining room at the time) we did it all in one day; I'm talking having the pictures hung back on the wall before we went to bed. But, painting is not what this post is about. I bring it up merely to illustrate the fact that Mama has instilled in all of us children a firm belief that we can "do-it-ourself."

Learning to upholster has been on our to-do list for quite some time; Mama and I have talked about it for years. Then, we started talking about it with our friends, the Boatrights; that was about two years ago. About three weeks ago, out of the blue we decided to stop talking about it and actually do it. We set the date on Sunday at church, and on Friday morning, bright and early, Caroline and Mrs. Jane showed up at our house and we got started on our very first upholstery project. Or, maybe I should say, Molly Elizabeth, Caroline, and I got started; Mama and Mrs. Jane got side tracked.

We decided to do a wing chair that had belonged to my Grandmother. It was still in pretty good shape, but it's mauve-faded-to-pink color didn't really match our decor. Using the basic upholstery directions that Mom found on-line, and with the confidence born of many years of do-it-yourself projects, we set to work ripping the fabric off of a perfectly good chair.

When you are taking it apart you always start with the back.

You take the fabric off of the chair in the reverse order that it was put on. So, you start with the back and work towards the front. Keep each piece as intact as possible, because you'll use it for your pattern piece to cut out your new fabric. Also, take pictures as you go along so that you can refer to them if you have questions about how to put it back together.

These metal strips run down the sides of the back piece and are what attach the fabric to the chair. Make sure to save them; just straighten them out with your pliers and use them again!

Use a flat head screwdriver along with needle nose pliers to remove all of the staples. I recommend working with a sheet under the chair, because there are a LOT of staples to remove, and it would make clean up easier (we're still finding staples). Also, make sure to save the piping that you take off; you can reuse it.

Make sure to mark each piece so that you know where it goes and which way is up.

Leave the stuffing in place as much as possible. This front piece is the last one to come off and the first one you put back on.

Lay your old pieces down on your new fabric and cut out the new pieces. The fabric we used was a reversible fabric (creamy white on one side and pink on the other) that Mom had picked up on clearance a while back. She bought the whole bolt for $15 so we weren't really worried about messing it up. I don't think I would pick any really expensive fabric for your first project. Make sure to take note of where any sewing was done. For instance, we had to make darts on the very front piece and we had to hand sew in the half circle-ish piece that goes over the arm.

These darts were sewn on the machine.

For the first piece, we hand sewed it to the seat of the chair and then pulled it tight and stapled.

Mama taught Caroline how to make piping. Reuse the old piping and it will be exactly the right length!

Some of the pieces slide all the way through to the back of the chair to staple.

You need two pairs of hands to upholster: one to pull it tight, and one to staple.

If we look tired it's because it was late!

When we ran into a problem with the back piece at 1:00 a.m., we had to call it a day. We finished all but the back piece and the cushion. I finished those the next day. I had to hand sew the back piece across the curve at the top, because we couldn't get the staple gun in close enough with the curve. We've since discovered they make a metal strip called curve-ease to go around such curves. It has little teeth that you push the fabric into and simply hammer it shut; we'll have some of that next time!

Our finished project!

I must say that Caroline and I were pretty pleased (almost ecstatic) with the way our first project turned out. In fact we're already planning our next one!

Upholstering really isn't that difficult, and I think next time it will go much faster since we now know more about what we're doing. Remember the first rule of being a do-it-yourselfer: if they can do it, we can do it. If we can do it, you can do it.

Happy Upholstering!

Susan Liana

Free Pears

Now, that is a sign that would grab most anyone's attention. It certainly caught ours.

So, yesterday, Mama, Clay, and I decided to go pick some. We made a bee line to those pears like bees to a honey pot and asked the man outside if we could pick. He told us where to go, so around the corner we went to the pear-laden tree. It didn't take us long to pick about 40 pears, a good basket full. Well, let me back up, we didn't pick them all. Most of them were laying on the ground, perfectly ripe, so that all we had to do was pick them up! However, the yellow jackets were swarming about all of the luscious, fermented pears on the ground; I wasn't about to fight the yellow jackets for their mushy nest around the base of the tree! I guess that is why I only had 7 pears in my bag, while Mama's and Clay's bags were bursting their seams. Just know that it is faster to pick pears than strawberries, peanuts, or other small edible items. You should go pick pears sometime; it is very satisfying =).