Deep in the Heart of Austin Texas

i don’t want to do a whole reveal of the chair until after my last class on thursday when it will be totally complete, but i did want to talk about welt cord for a moment. (also known as piping to those who sew). in upholstery it is known as welt cord, and you have a choice of single or double.

my chair called for double welt cord around the edges. you make it by cutting strips of your fabric on the bias and then sewing two flexible cloth cords into it. it’s hard to explain but actually quite easy to do.

i’m a TOTAL novice sewer and had to be rescued a couple times on the industrial machine, but it turned out good in the end once i got the hang of it.

after i made enough cord to go around my chair, i trimmed the seam allowances off all the strips and got ready to glue them on.

yes, i said glue. i thought they were stapled on, too. the cord i pulled off my chair when breaking it down was stapled with tiny staples. but both instructors say that they prefer to glue so you don’t see any staples at all.

so i fired up the glue gun and got to work.

MAN! what a difference. it covers up your staple line and uneven fabric cutting around the edges and makes it look polished and professional.

here is a picture of the back of the seat before the welt cord application.

and here it is after i glued the cord on.

so nice, right?

here is one of the arms before.

and after

loving this class. so sad that thursday is the last one, but happy that i will actually be finishing my chair. i’m ready to move on to another one and test my skills on my own. and then ready to get up at the crack of dawn to try to register for another round in the fall.

just wanted to share a quick project i finished today, craig’s motorcycle seat.

he bought a 20 year old bike off craigslist and this is what the 20 year old seat looked like when it came to live in our garage.

GROSS.

it had ripped at some point and been put back together with duct tape. needless to say, it had gotten pretty nasty.

i put on some gloves and went to town tearing it apart. we bought new foam and some perforated vinyl to redo it. i had to use spray adhesive to get the foam to stick to the curves in the seat.

it was challenging because you have to staple into the plastic seat and that doesn’t always work the way you want it to. but after some hard work, i think it came out pretty good. craig’s happy with it and that’s what matters, he’ll be the one riding it. i might hop on back one day, but only after he takes his “how to ride a motorcycle” course.

so, i finally have a moment to breathe. i went on a partying trip with friends to san francisco a two weekends ago. got back in town late the night before my very first upholstery class. i needed a vacation from my vacation, i was so tired. but i went and pulled staples out of my chair for four hours. and didn’t even really make a dent.

here is the before pic of the chair.

it’s a well made chair, really comfortable, but not my style at all with the country-ish plaid fabric and blonde wood.

i spent the entire next class also pulling out staples, ripping off fabric, and getting really frustrated. the wood (ash?) is so soft that some of the staples are completely imbedded and can’t be pulled out without totally gouging the wood.

but no time to work on it that next weekend, although i brought it home thinking i might. but we were off to a lovely wedding in the hill country for the weekend and by the time we got back on sunday, we crashed. seems to be a theme with our weekends away.

so i skipped class on tuesday (gasp!) to stay home and pull out staples. i naively thought i would be able to stain the wood that same evening. not in the cards.

i went back to class on thursday and made some progress. i had given up on some of the staples and sanded some of the wood down with my power sander. but there are so many nooks and crannies in the carvings that i will need to use good old fashioned elbow grease and sandpaper to get in it. the plan is to stain it darker. but if i don’t get all of the existing finish off in the tight spots, i’ll just paint it. my instructor is vocal in his dislike of painted wood, but i don’t have a problem with it.

here it is all stripped down.

lucky/unlucky for me, i didn’t have coil springs under all that seat foam. lucky because i have found that spring tying is a pretty crazy and time consuming process. unlucky because it is a skill that i am not doing myself and learning through repetition. my next chair will have springs, though. i gotta get that under my belt.

here is picture of the chair of one of my classmates. full of springs. this is how they were tied when she uncovered them. they took all of the twine off, reset the springs, and then she had to retie them. you have to keep the tension so the springs stay in place and don’t shift and don’t get all wonky. it doesn’t seem easy.

the next step was to put burlap over the springs. this will provide a base for the cotton batting and two inch foam. i also attached some thick cording stuff (can’t for the life of me remember what they called it) but it will also help with the seat, to give it shape.

this all involved the staple gun, so it was super fun. i LOVE me some power tools.

i brought it home again this weekend to stain the frame and then next week it is all about padding the seat and then fabric!

i have a fabric that i haven’t decided if i love or not. i’m going tomorrow to see if something else strikes my fancy.

but i’m getting excited! i definitely like the rebuilding part 20X better than the deconstruction part. pretty sure that when i have kids i will pay them to pull the staples out of future projects. is that wrong?