uphostered furniture

[Ron Franssen]

Does any one out build upholstered furniture. I'm looking to try my hand at it and I'm looking for information on how to proceed. I looked online for books, etc. and haven't found anything yet. My next stop is the public library, but maybe someone can point toward to good resources.

thanks

[John Fry]

Hi Ron,

I have built several upholstered chairs and I looked for books and articles on the techniques needed for their construction. I could find nothing. I always build a prototype for chairs so I can check comfort and fit, so after I had a good mock-up completed, I took it to the upholsterer and asked him what I needed to make it into a workable, upholstery frame chair.

Basically what you will need to add are internal upholsterer's bars that they can staple webbing, if needed, and fabric to, and then be able to stretch the material as needed. If the piece is to be done with hand tied springs, then there can be other needs too, like clearances in the seat area, and rabbets if there will be tacks or welting.

Here is a pic of a chair that is starting its upholstery job.



Note the curved, bent laminated, upholsterer's bar just above the back of the seat. This allows them to stretch the muslin, foam, jute, and seat fabric from the seat area under the bar and staple it to the top of the rear seat rail. For the inside of the seat back, he will stretch webbing from the crest rail down and staple it to the curved bar, and the finish fabric will then be pulled under the bar and stapled to the back. This is what creates the clean joint between the set and back fabric.

Finally, the back of the back is upholstered from crest rail to the seat rail rabbet, and this covers everything up.

Here is what it looked like when it was all done;



That's probably all hard to understand, but the bottom line is that is very important to understand the "fabric man's" needs, (even if that is going to be you), before you finish building the upholstery frame.

[Pat Germain]

FYI, Norm has done at least two upholstered projects on NYW. One was a leather cigar chair and the other was an unusual upholstered bench. Although I'm not interested in upholstery right now, I found both projects very informative and interesting.

I would recommend picking up both of these videos from the NYW web site.

[Brian Kerley]

Well, it really depends. There are different types of springs you can have, or no springs at all. For an chair to go around a dining table, you can just use a piece of masonite with a large piece of foam on top that drops into the chair. You can do sinuous springs (see the NYW cigar chair), coil springs as posted above, or you can do rubber webbing that supports a cushion.

You might want to find an inexpensive upholstered chair on Craigslist in the style you are looking for, and rip it open to see how everything goes together, as well as seeing what the innards look like.

Dining chairs are probably the easiest things to do, while wingback chairs, etc, get very complicated quickly.

[John Fry]

Brian is correct, wing back chairs can get more complicated. This wing back has five upholsterer's bars rather than the one in the dining chair. Plus it has hand tied springs in both the seat and back.

The blue tape is not what I used for a finish. It is to protect the ebonized and gilded carvings on the legs, rails, and arms.

[Jim Becker]

I was looking for good books on the subject a few years ago and found plenty of titles that dealt with the upholstery part, but almost nothing on the design/build for the underlying framework. That's been frustrating to me, but I guess there is apparently a very limited market for that kind of resource.

John Kelsey from Cambium Books recommended one title to me; Upholstery A Complete Course by David James (ISBN 1-86108-118-9) and it is possible to glean some of the details of the framework from the various illustrations and photos, but still, there is really limited information on the actual design/build of the underpinnings for the upholstered furniture.

Pat is correct...Norm Abram did a very nice leather chair a few years ago. The plans are available and frankly, you should watch that episode, too, as they go to a factory to see how it's done and then he does it in the shop. This is about the only thing I've seen that actually shows the full construction.

[Steve Schoene]

I took an evening course at a local high school that went through the process of the eight-way tie for coil springs as well as the other basics. Used it to re-upholster one chair that looks pretty good. I just had a few repairs to make on the frame, not making one from scratch.

I believe that Vandal's Queen Anne Furniture has plans to make the frame for a wing chair.

As a side bar, I once visited the upholstery shop at Colonial Williamsburg. A process developed their has apparently revolutionized how museums prepare upholstered furniture for display. One of the problems has always been that each reupholstering in the traditional fashion leaves another set of tack holes in the frames, with serious impact on its integrity. The solution--upholster the fabric onto sheet metal covers that just slip fit tightly onto the frame. Few if any new holes, authentic looking upholstery that can be removed without damage to the frame if further study is needed. You can't sit on museum pieces anyway.