Part III Reupholstering the Antique Winged Chair: Putting on the Good Stuff

The first thing to do on the inside arms was to pad the arm cap with a thin layer of cotton batting and staple it in place. The cotton batting is split in half about 1/4-inch from the edge and then staple. The top half of the cotton is place over the staple. The fabric was layered over the cotton and tacked in place. Once the fabric was lined up with the tacks, I stapled it permanently and cut the fabric around the stained wood. I had problems cutting the fabric close to the finished wood. First, I used a razor blade and found the fabric pulled back from the edge showing some of the muslin and polyester filling. Alaine, my teacher, suggested using a good pair of scissors would work much better and edges did show less when using the scissors.







The wing part of the chair is above the arm cap and everything below is the arm section. Each of these section is a separate cut piece. I cut all the arm pieces from the garnet colored velour fabric. I brought this wonderful cording to sew between the inside arm and wing pieces. The cording also wraps around the inside and outside of the arm cap.

Once the two-piece were sewed together, I lined the cording along the cap's edge. I used t-pins to hold the fabric in place before lifting the arm fabric over the cap to secure it in place with staples. The picture below shows how I pinned the fabric in place. On the seat you can also see the gimp braid I will be using to cover the fabric raw edge next to the stained wood.




Now that the center line is securely in place, it is the usually tucking, cutting, before tacking the piece in place. This time I will be tacking the bottom arm fabric to the seat frame not the arm. Doing this keeps object from slipping in between the inside & outside arm fabric and gives the chair a smoother look with fewer gaps. I did the same thing when attaching the back bottom to the frame. The back section of the arm and wing were also tack to the back wood supports f achieving the same results. The last thing I did was stapling everything in place.

Here is a picture showing how not to do the back. I had to pull tacks out of the arm and pull the fabric to the back support.







The inside chair is now done and the outside arms except some trimming and gluing the gimp on. The chair's back, cushion and dust cover are what is left to do.