Fiber Dreams

The fabric on our kitchen chairs has, uh, been wearing out the last number of years. To put it mildly. Of a set of six chairs, five look like this one. The sixth one looks fine, because 1. it’s the captain’s chair, and 2. the rungs are broken and sitting in it would probably land a person on the floor amid a pile of splinters. Most of what you see on the seat of that chair is cotton batting. The red is some very old fabric that was put on the chair professionally, by the looks of it. The gold is fabric that was put on over the red fabric once the red started wearing out. Not much left of either at this point. You can also see the edge of the wooden part of the seat under the batting.

Besides the looks, which are obviously heinously embarrassing, having the padding exposed is a disaster. It sticks to one’s clothes, and ends up all over the house. Gads.

Mom’s been wanting to help us with these chairs for a long time now.

When she was down last year at Christmas, we even went so far as to look for new fabric. No luck was had that day, but it was a start.

Meanwhile, time goes by.

In February, I was given a pile of fabric (the sewing variety) by a soon-to-be ex-neighbor, Tom. Yea, Tom! Within that mountain of material, there was a piece that I thought might just work in our kitchen. Dave approved. I set it aside.

Mom was in town this past weekend, and really wanted to get going on those chairs, especially since I had some fabric that would work now. We made a couple calls, and found a store—AAA Upholstery Supply & Fabric Co., Inc.—that said they had cotton batting. Here’s Mom sitting on the floor with it, partially unrolled. It was probably about two-and-a-half or three feet in diameter before we unrolled it—big enough that it’s a good thing it wasn’t any bigger, or it wouldn’t have fit in my car.

Hint: AAA Upholstery is amazing. Just be sure you deal with the young woman who works there, if at all possible. She knows what they have, and is able to make the old guys go get it.

In the photo above, Mom was watching Ricki who was quite the curious kitty, wondering what we were up to, sniffing everything, checking it all out. Here’s Mom wondering how to start, now that we have the padding.

We moved things around a bit, to make them more convenient, and Ricki decided it was time to start helping in earnest. What good is a bale of batting if you don’t walk the length of it, then sit on it? I mean, really.
Dave’s part was to pull the nails from the chairs, releasing what was left of the old fabric and batting. This was no mean feat, what with two different fabrics attached to each chair, there were a lot of nails to take out.

While Dave was doing that, Mom and I started cutting the batting. We used another chair seat as a pattern, and made two pieces of batting for each chair. We laid the fabric, right side down, on the table, then the two layers of batting, centered, then the wood seat.

Mom pulled on the fabric, and I operated the staple gun. We probably would have used those little nails instead, but the staple gun was a lot easier. We also had one. We did each side, then the corners.
Can you believe the difference? I mean… look at this. It’s almost like getting a whole new chair! Even the wood looks better. Here’s a photo of two chairs done.

And, ta da! Three chairs done, and sitting around the table. It’s astounding. I love them! And they were so much easier than I thought they would be. Even the dreaded corners.

We did a total of four of the six chairs. Dave and I will do the other two ourselves. Hopefully soon. I’m hoping we’ll have time for them this weekend, but it’s shaping up to be a busy couple of days, so I don’t know. We’ll see.

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