Why, taking her first ever (and maybe last ever!) upholstery class, of course! Yep, that’s what I do for fun and to save money (but lose blood) on my own furniture. In typical fashion, I began my upholstering odyssey with THE hardest thing for even seasoned craftsmen to do: tufting. And not just any tufting, but a tufted double ottoman with 18 buttons. sigh
Before I even show you the piece, let me tell you, this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I have some arthritis setting in that I refuse to acknowledge, and removing hundreds of staples from this very well-made piece in order to “break it down” was killer on my hands. I also, at one point, sported 4 Band-Aids. Yes, there IS a reason why you usually see male upholsterers. And how much did my husband help? Well…he puts the ottoman in the car for me, if he’s home. He never took out one staple. He never even offered. Not that I blame him, but there *is* a husband in our class, helping his wife every single week.
Anyway, here is the ottoman “before,” while it has doggie hair and dirt on it and where you can see my Australian cattle dog bit some buttons off, back when he was a pup. What you can’t see from my photo is that this is forest green, burgundy and cream. I’m trying to do a more updated color. As the story continues, just about everything went wrong with finding my fabric!
So, the fabric I chose was this (below) but you can’t tell it’s more of a light gold with, again, the green and burgundy:
I LOVED this fabric and it was $15/yd from the discount place. Got 5 yards. Began breaking down my ottoman:
I don’t have photos of the stripped-down piece, but to continue with my sad fabric saga, once I took it to class, we figured out it wasn’t wide enough (ottoman is longer than 54” fabric) AND the pattern ran in one direction, like wallpaper. That meant that if I “railroad” the pattern top to bottom all around like I’m supposed to, the pattern would be upside-down in the back. Now, for some people, that might work, if the piece goes up against a bed’s footboard or something. However, this is extra seating for my den, so it sorta needed to be correct.
Solution: use that fabric on my 2nd upholstery project, which is another really difficult piece, a chair with channeled back and piping!
I’ll post more photos later of my ottoman. Each class is 3 hours, takes 4 classes and costs $195 total. Fabric was sorta purchased twice. I don’t think I’m saving much money, do you? LOL
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