Rocking Chair

Good afternoon.  Here it is Wednesday and we are ready for a new project.  We will be redoing the upholstery on an old rocking chair.  We did not do any refinishing as we wanted it to remain as it is.  This project took a little more time and effort but the results were great.  If you have a piece of furniture that is old and needs to have something done, it is possible but will take patience.

 

Here is a picture of what we started with.  As you can see, it definitely needs a new upholstered cushion. 

 

 

 

For this project we needed the following:  3/4 yard upholstery fabric

                                                             1/2 yard burlap fabric

                                                             cotton batting

                                                             1 1/8 yards of trim (can use upholstery tape)

                                                             1 pkg. larger tacks

                                                             1 pkg. smaller tacks

                                                             hammer 

                                                             We also needed some twine to reinforce the springs.

 

 

 

 

We needed to reinforce the springs as they were somewhat weak and so we strung the twine across to give it a little more support and tacked it.

 

 

 

Next we took some burlap and covered it over the old.  Other than one small area, the old burlap that was on the seat was in really good condition yet and we did not feel it was necessary to tear that all out.  We just put another piece of burlap over it and tacked it down.  It looked really nice when we were finished putting the burlap on.

 

 

 

Next the cushion that was in it was made up of straw and a cotton batting.  We kept the old cushion but just took some new cotton batting and wrapped it around the straw and old batting.

 

 

 

Next we took our piece of old upholstery and cut a new piece from the upholstery fabric that we chose.  We centered it how we wanted the pattern to be on the seat.  Remember to cut your new piece a little bigger as the old one, by this time, has become quite thin. 

 

 

 

Now you are ready to put a tack on each of the four sides to see if your pattern is where you want it to be.

 

 

 

If you are happy with how your pattern is centered, you will begin to tack each side.  Do just a few until you have all four sides with some and then you can continue to fill in with the remaining tacks.  For this part, we used the small tacks until we got to the corners.

 

 

 

Now you will need to tackle the corners on the front and back.  We tried our best to follow the old pattern but that can be hard as the old was weak and falling apart.  This is where we used the larger tacks due to the fact the fabric folds were thicker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the sides are hidden when in the chair, all we needed to finish off was the front and back.  We chose a small trim but this is where you could also use upholstery tape. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you are finished and you have a beautiful seat to put back in the rocking chair.

 

 

 

Here is a finished look when all completed.

 

 

 

We will be discussing the steps a little more in detail as the week goes along to help you with a project like this.  You never know exactly what you will entail until you start to take it apart.  Remember to mark with a piece of tape where you take out bolts or nails so you can put them back where they go when you put your project back together.