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Pimp My Furniture: Rocking Chair Part II

By Dawn Sailors In Pimp my Furniture

Hey there! I can’t wait to show you the end result of this chair project. If you missed part one, be sure to check it out and catch up. Now on to part II! I’m very excited about how it turned out.

When we left off, it was looking like this:

I’d prepared the frame and we were ready to cut the supports and foam for upholstery. Brettles got right on the seat support using his jig saw (after only a little encouragement- ha) and I got to work on the back support. I actually just used some spare cardboard (which you can see in the picture above), because I wanted it to be sturdy but thin. Since the caning was still in good shape on the top, it didn’t need a lot of extra support, just something to secure the fabric to.

After getting the supports cut, I moved on to the foam. I bought a large sheet of 2-inch foam and originally planned to use it for both the seat and the back. Cutting it out and shaping it was by far the most tedious part of this project. Not because it was difficult, but just because it’s messy and the baby beast wouldn’t stop trying to eat the pieces of foam that were sticking to everything!

To cut it, I just traced around my support boards onto the foam and used a bread knife to cut them out (if you have a carving knife that would be better- I don’t have one), and then used regular old scissors to shape the edges. I didn’t want sharp square edges for this chair, so I trimmed the foam into a slightly curved profile.

Once that was done, I started on the actual upholstery. I did the back support first, and started by using spray adhesive to secure the foam to the cardboard. Then I wrapped it all in batting. Once it was ready for the actual fabric, I had to make sure it was lined up just how I wanted. With a strong pattern, you always want to check and double-check that it is lined up correctly. I wanted the back chevron to point upwards, and the seat to point down (going in opposite directions out from the middle of the chair) for a fun detail, so I made sure everything was centered and cut out my fabric.

Once it was all cut, I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, so I just used my old standby trial-and-error method to attach it to the seat back. Unfortunately, this trial was an error.

Once I got it up there, something about it just didn’t look quite right to me. I left it that way for a few more days and even asked a few friends for opinions, but finally decided there was just too much padding for the back of the chair. Plus I wanted to attach it in a way where there was less mess (ie- fabric and staples) showing that would need to be hidden later. But that meant that I had to essentially start over… and all my work in cutting and shaping the foam was wasted! Drat.

But I didn’t want to half-ass it, as my dad would say, so I took it apart and worked on a new solution. I really wanted just a small, slight curved padding for the back, with a larger more comfortable and stable padding for the seat, so I came up with the solution of using pillow stuffing. I reused my cardboard and just shaped the stuffing into a little mound, then recovered the whole thing with the batting and fabric I’d already cut.

This time I used pins to secure the fabric to the cardboard and then pulled it tight and stapled the edges to the chair (see pics below if that doesn’t make sense), which was more difficult, but resulted in a much cleaner edge to cover. And it worked out great! Just what I had in mind, and much better than the first try.

Once that was done, I followed the same upholstery steps for the seat. This time just working my way around and stapling the fabric to the bottom of my support board (like you normally would for an upholstery project).

But I ran into another issue with figuring out how to attach the seat to the chair, since there was literally nothing to screw it into. So I do what I usually do when I encounter a problem, I put it on the back-burner while I worked on something else!

I moved on to the detail work (my favorite part!) of the chair back. Now, Ideally, you’d probably want to use a welt cord or double welt to cover the edges and staples, but I wasn’t confident enough with my sewing skills to attempt to make those myself yet (read: haven’t used my new machine yet), so I opted to just use regular old bias tape as an edging detail instead. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, bias tape is basically just thin strips of fabric that have been cut on a bias (usually it’s used to edge clothing or quilts or other such things). That means it is cut at an angle to the ‘grain’ of the fabric, instead of straight across. This makes it easier to bend in whatever direction you need to, without the fabric puckering. Welting or double welting cord is basically the same thing, but has a cord sewn into it. It is usually used for upholstery edging because it bends easily and covers uneven edges and staples. I fully plan on learning to make my own welting one of these days. Maybe I’ll even redo the edging on this chair at that time, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see! As for bias tape, you can buy it at any fabric store in various sizes and colors.

(The cording in the photo above comes into play later, fyi.) Back to the project. I opted for a bright pink trim to stand out from the yellow fabric, and just used a thin bead of fabric glue to attach it to the edges of the chair. I love the contrast!

I had quite a bit of scraps left over, so I also bought a fabric button kit and made four pink buttons to add even more detail to the chair back. Making fabric buttons is super simple. Just follow the directions on the back of the package!

To attach them, I just marked where I wanted them to sit on the chair and used upholstery needles to securely fix them to the caning of the chair. I would recommend using upholstery thread, which is much thicker and stronger than regular thread.

I made sure to pull them pretty tight, so they were slightly indented into the chair back. Then I crisscrossed the thread and knotted it securely. When I was finished, the back of the chair looked like this:

Obviously, I needed to cover that up, so i just cut another piece of cardboard, spray-mounted my fabric to it and stuck it (wedged it) in place. It was a pretty tight fit, which was good, but just to be sure it wasn’t going anywhere, I added a few staples around the edges to hold it in place.

Then I covered those edges with my bias tape edging too. By now the chair was looking pretty good! Minus the seat thing of course.

But, I had finally come up with a solution for that. Ok, really Brett had come up with a solution. (Thanks, Bud!) We ran to Lowes and picked up a pack of these metal brackets for about $2.50:

Which we then screwed into the chair frame. This gave us a nice little ledge of sorts that the chair cold sit on (it also rests on the wood frame of the chair- if you are counting on the brackets supporting all the weight, you may want to go for something a little sturdier). Once all four brackets were in place, I sat the seat in place and marked where they lined up from the bottom. Then I cut away the fabric and batting from those spots, so it wouldn’t tangle in the screws, and we screwed the seat in place! Yay!

All that was left was adding trim to the seat, but there was a little too much space here to use just bias tape without it just folding into the seam (this is why cording comes in handy…). So I filled the space by attaching bare cording (which you can buy at any fabric or craft store) and covering that with my bias tape trim. Voilá!

And finally, here is the finished chair!

And the chair in V’s room, where it belongs.

And in case you forgot, here’s the before/after comparison. I just love it!!

So, what do you think? Much cuter right? I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out and it was so worth the extra effort to make sure it was just how I wanted. Yay project complete!!

I hope you’re having a great weekend!

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