French Table and Chairs And a Chair Upholstering Tutorial.

 Be prepared, I fear this turned out to be a Photo laden post.

Before:

I hinted at this project HERE When I mentioned that they had caned backs and a couple of them had holes in the caning. 
  We used our handy tool there and cut out the caning.  Worked great and was pretty quick.  We sanded down what wouldn’t come out, and I was ready to go.
I painted them with Anne Sloans Chalk Paint in splotches of Paris Grey and French Linen.  Then I painted Old White over the whole thing. Oh I did the table too.  We sanded the top down and Stained it with Provincial and then put Polyurethane on the top of the table.
I saved the piece of caning that we took out so I would have a pattern to cut the drop cloth fabric which is what I used for the upholstery.
Then I stapled the cut out piece where the caning was. Pulling tightly alternating from side to side and top to bottom so it would be stretched evenly.
This is the front of the chair with the first layer of drop cloth added where the caning was.  You can see that after I painted the chairs I distressed them back down so you can see wood, the Paris Grey and French Linen. 
This is the back of the chair after that first layer of fabric was added.
After I had put the first layer of fabric on I needed the padding, using the same caned piece I had saved I cut 1 inch foam to the same shape.
I felt that they needed a little shaping to cut off that sharp edge. So I used our electric knife (you can pick one up at your local thrift store, this one is 40 years old we got it for our wedding, still works! So 1970’s in that lovely green color!!) and cut that edge off.

This is the front of the chair with the foam over that first layer of fabric.  I then cut a piece of poly batting larger than the caned piece I was using for a pattern.
I laid it on top of the foam and tucked the edges around the foam.
  After this layer was laid down, I cut another piece of drop cloth larger than the pattern. This is the next layer or top layer to go over the foam and poly.

You can see that I laid the chairs down on their backs and laid all these layers down.  Next came the stapling.  I have an air stapler. Worth its weight in GOLD for stapling.
I stapled as close to the place where the caning came out as possible following the curves at the top, the trick is to use lots of staples and just line them up like stitches. Pulling tight and working from side to side and top to bottom.  Meaning a few staples at the top then a few at the center bottom.  Then move to the center of the side and do a few on one side then a few on the opposite side pulling tight.
The next step was to get all that excess fabric away from the staples so we could add some really nice trim to cover up all those staples.
I used a very technical tool razor blade. It worked well on the Drop Cloth material some fabrics can be trickier. Meaning harder to cut. I would know that from HERE this fabric did not want to be cut at all.
After the excess fabric was cut off I added the "Gimp" that's what this fancy trim is called.  Fancy and Cheap lucky me, also it turns corners really well. So it was me, my hot glue (not the cool glue gun that will not hold up) and the gimp 14 yards of it!


Where they meet you have to be careful and blend the two edges together.  For those of you who have not used this “gimp” before it unravels REALLY easy.  When I start, I make a puddle of glue and dip the end of the gimp into it and lay it down and start around the stapled edge of fabric.  At the end I cut it very carefully dab some glue on the cut edge and squish them together.

The seats were already upholstered when I got them.  So I just covered up the existing seat cushion with my drop cloth fabric.  Stretching side to side as I did the backs of the chairs.
DONE!  All 6 Plus the table… Its at the store if anyone is interested.

Hope you all enjoyed my huge project.
Have a great week!

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