Beside the Stream

My mother recently passed on a painting that used to be my grandmother’s.  I have a dressing table that belonged to my other grandmother, so I put them together to make a Grandmother’s Corner. 

The only problem is the seat cushion, which I recovered about 12 years ago.

I thought this jungle-theme tapestry was supercool at the time, but now it clashes. 

Like most seatcovers, it’s just stapled onto the wooden form.  I pull off the bottom panel first, and then rip off the seat fabric. 

There’s another layer of fabric underneath.  I try to pull out these staples, but they’re in there too tightly

so I cut the fabric and pull it off.

This is the underside of the seat cushion: I think it’s cotton batting with a horsehair pad.   It’s not dirty, it doesn’t smell, and it’s still springy, so I’m reusing it. 

I’m recovering this seat with a nice piece of Scalamandre velvet (from Ebay), so I put the fabric face down, and then lay down the old horsehair and cotton cushion and flip the plywood form to get a side that’s not needled with staple holes.  I staple the fabric down along the easiest side first: the straight back. 

Next I staple the curved front.  The fabric has to be pulled taut–the tighter the fabric, the better the results. 

The sides are the hard part.  First I cut the corners so there is less fabric to fold.

I fold the corner like you wrap a present, fiddle with it, and pull it tight to set the first corner staple. 

This is after I get the second corner staple in place,

and then you do the staples in between (alright, this is the other side, but I have to use the photos I have).

Now all of the sides are stapled, and I’ve trimmed the excess fabric.  I know it looks like a mess, but be patient. 

I plop the backing that I saved from the old cover right on top of what looks like an amateurish job, and staple around the edges.    And I’m done. 

Here’s the cushion when I flip it over.  This striated Scalamandre velvet is really special–the character is woven right into it– 

and here it is back in place.  I got visual assonance for $20 of Ebay velvet and a few staples.  Bob thinks I’m out of my mind to bother, and I think it’s cheap thrills.  I suspect that’s a male-female divide, and I understand that some people would never recover their cushions to match.  But if you should happen to want to, it’s much easier than you’d think.