To recap this project, the chair was originally purchased by Tami's parents decades ago to rock their newborn baby and was then passed on to Tami when her children were born. As a Christmas gift, Wyman thought it would be nice to restore the chair so that future generations might enjoy its use for several more decades to come. For the project, the old coverings were removed and for all intents and purposes set aside until Wyman was able to finish the woodwork and upgrade hardware, and, for Russ to wrap up a few other projects, discover more projects, and buy another sewing machine and learn to use it - but, that's another story in itself.
The chair went back together using foam padding wrapped in polyester and covered with muslin to keep everything in place, which made it very easy to slip the new coverings on and into place. Fortunately I took several photos of tearing the chair apart so with a bit of image study and tinkering I was able to pretty quickly figure out what needed to be made and the order it had to be reassembled. The assembly order was without question the biggest hurdle to overcome.
One of the most impressive things that came out of this project was the realization of the shear amount of piping that was needed. I'm no math whiz but I estimated I'd need about 30 feet of piping, which seems like a LOT of piping to me. However, it came as somewhat of a shock to see it used so quickly. I still have to ask, how was that even possible?
Given the fact we're novices in this world, we decided to make a cover to prototype what was to come and use it as a pattern. Being fiscally frugal, yeah that's what we are, we used some of the $2.00/yard upholstery fabric we scored a few weeks ago. Bright! Ugly! Cheap! Yep, I'd agree with all those adjectives! But, it served multiple purposes and it's hard to argue against doing so when you look at the final results!
Shown here are a few pictures of the reconstruction. Using the fabric above as a pattern we cut and sewed the seat covering with piping. In this picture the seat covering is turned inside-out. The material is called Ultra-Hyde II and is a delight to work with. I'm not sure I've really got the hang of it yet because it stretches a bit differently than conventional woven fabrics so the amount of tension applied toward corners is comparatively somewhat less, otherwise you end up with lots of small pleats that meticulous people like me are compelled to deal with. Lesson learned here, I'm unlikely to earn a livable wage doing this! ;-) It's a good thing this is just a hobby!!!
