You might notice the blue Painter's Tape covering the show wood. I used it in part to protect the wood and discovered it worked extremely well for marking the center lines and decorative nail locations. Rollin and I discussed the methodology that I should use to rebuild the seat. Generally speaking, a layer of burlap, covered with cotton - being careful to fill in any depressions between the springs, an inch of medium firmness polyurethane foam, and topped with an inch of bonded polyester batting just to smooth out any uneven areas before covering with fabric. Below we see cotton batting mounded to help shape the cushion and smooth out any low-lying areas.
After adding the foam we covered it with poly wrap batting and tacked in place.
Here, Alan gets sucked into helping me due to, well, this is where the title comes from... So, my first attempt at covering this chair resulted in the dragonflies flying out of uniform formation. Sure, they were flying straight from the front to the back and were well centered along the centerline of the seat but the ones on the right were leading the ones on the left by by a half inch or more. Granted, that doesn't sound like much but it was one of those things that in good conscience I just couldn't let out of the studio. Therefore, Alan spent the day with me ripping everything apart down to the burlap - now this probably doesn't sound like a lot of work, and it's not, other than having to remove a bazillion staples!!! In retrospect, I recognize that my staple pulling technique has dramatically improved as a result!
In explaining the delay to the person I'm doing the work for, I've come up with ideas for a new motto, "I'll do it right, eventually." or "Let's do it right, the second time." or perhaps, "I need to take a few lefts before I get it right."!
Regardless, I hope my upholsterer mentor will have a good laugh at this story when he comes over to critique my work. I wonder if he'll provide yet another motto suggestion? ;-)