I learn something new! Upholstery class is my latest lesson. Yep, that’s what I do for fun and to save money (but lose blood)--I work 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 my sad story, once I took it to class, we figured out the fabric wasn’t wide enough (ottoman is longer than 54” fabric width) 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!
By the way, each class is 3 hours, takes 4 classes and costs $195 total. Fabric was sort of purchased twice. I don’t think I’m saving much money, do you? LOL
I think a good part of why it’s hard is because I’m not that good at workshops. The course is done “round robin” style, which means you have to wait until the instructor comes back around to you for further instruction. I’m not very good at waiting. I’m always ready to move on. Anyway, here are some photos of the piece as I work on it. I have the welt cord (piping) on now, so the only remaining step is to replace the padding and stapling of the bottom. I cannot WAIT to finish. I do this on Sundays from 3-6PM, which I probably already said was a hard time of the day for me. I’m always tired by 5, and by 6 I’m pretty worthless! (which makes crock pot dinners great for me!)
And here are a few final photos of the class and my piece, which lacks only the very bottom.
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