Chair - IV

Finally, it feels like things are starting to come together with this chair. It's great to be making progress and I'm getting excited to finish this project off and start on the next.


This post will focus on the chair back.  Thankfully, for me, this portion of the project required little sewing.

Above is my starting point. In a previous class I had added the webbing, felt and the layer of cotton batting. Today's post is all about getting some fabric on the chair back.

Step one was to cut a piece of fabric large enough to cover the front and wrap around the sides of the chair back. It doesn't need to be perfect and precise, as I'll be adding on a back piece, which will cover things up nicely.

I begin to mould the fabric to the chair back. Stapling at the bottom first, then smoothing out the fabric and stapling at the top, smooth out again and staple at the side. Repeat this process until the fabric looks acceptable and is secured on all sides.

Cutting around the legs is not as hard as I thought it would be. Cut the fabric in a Y shape up the centre of the leg and tuck it under to make it look finished. Staple to secure. Done and done!

Above you can see two small pins that are being used as place holders for the buttons. I put them in roughly where I thought they'd look nice and then measured their placement to make sure they were both equidistant from the sides, top and bottom.

This is the needle used to feed the button through the back. It's a lot of work getting that thing through the fabric, layers of felt, cardboard and webbing. I suggest you do some upper body work at the gym in the weeks leading up to this task.

Finally! The buttons are through!

Use some scrap felt to help secure the knot for the buttons. If extra tension is needed, pull the button's stings tight and staple them to the chair's frame. 

Next step is to add the back fabric panel. The fabric has been secured to the top with staples. I've added a piece of cardboard to help give that top fold some structure. 

I also added a piece of old fabric to the back to give it a bit more substance. Otherwise, it would just be the one panel of (new) fabric on the back. This just builds it up a bit.

After stapling the old fabric, I then pulled the panel of new fabric over the back of the chair. The above photo shows the bottom of the fabric panel, which has been folded under and secured with a row of staples. I could have hand stitched this, but chose not to. Mostly because I am lazy. Nobody sees this area, so it is considered acceptable to staple. 

I still have to hand stich the sides of the back panel. Then, the chair back will be finished!! Next post will hopefully feature the finished chair. I certainly hope it does anyway, as I believe it's our last class.