Another Quick Upholstery Job!

My sister was at the DI recently (a local thrift store) and spotted this lovely chair for just $15.  

She texted me a picture and asked if I wanted it- um YES!!!!

I was looking for this type of chair for my kitchen desk area (and thankfully had mentioned it to my sister).

I chose a grey and white wool tweed fabric I found at Hancock Fabrics and used almost 4 yards.  I have "reupholstered" a few chairs before and followed the same easy procedure (click here to see the easy way!).  

The only difference is that this chair had tufting!  I saved this area for last.  My secret weapon was a hot glue gun.  First, using staples, I secured a large piece of fabric on the underside at the back of the bottom of the chair.  Then I wrapped the fabric up the back, over the top, and down the frontside of the chair.  Before attaching the front side with staples, I simply stuck blobs of glue on the top row of buttons, then worked the fabric in and around the buttons.  For the next row, lift up the fabric and put glue on the next row of buttons, then put the fabric back down and push in place, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Once the buttons were all glued in place, I secured everything with staples.  

It basically worked and when I was done it looked great!  

It looks like there are fabric tufted buttons - even though there aren't.  

However after a weeks worth of use, I learned a few things.

1)Fabric on top of leather is slippery - covering fabric chairs with fabric keeps things in place a lot better and is a little easier to do!

2) A thick wool tweed fabric was a good choice for working with hot glue.  Some fabrics would be too thin and might discolor where the glue is.

3) hot glue when dried easily pulls off of leather - DUH!  I should have known that!  Maybe "super glue" would have worked better?  After some of the glued fabric came loose I just had to reinforce it with more staples - I might have to resort to actually using a long upholstery needle and thread to hold the fabric down and in place (which shouldn't be too hard).

Again, if I was doing fabric on top of fabric this problem could have been a non issue.  I think hot glue would hold better to a fabric button?

Anyway things are holding up for now and I am enjoying the new look!

 Once the chair was finished, I hot glued a small white ribbon to the front of the chair for an added detail.