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The Chair–channel backs, and cookies with Eli

This is what my studio looks like while a work is in progress … since this “work” is a huge chair, it is a huge mess. The studio, by the way, is the room over the garage …l ots of footprint, but short on wall space (all angles). But it is the brightest room in the house and I love having “my” space!

In this photo, Thumper the cat of 25 toes (yes, cats usually have 16 plus the two dewclaws) is making sure that the pieces set aside don’t slide off the bed. Ahem!

I always wondered how they made those cool vertical channels in chairs. Here is what the chair looked like in the beginning (well…the seat cushion is not on in this photo, but you get the idea):

My favorite chair growing up is a wing-back chair with channels. Mom still has it and I hope to inherit it some day…. Anyway, when I “deconstructed” the hippo chair, I found out how they do it. No, it is not tunnels of one fabric stitched to a single backing, or fabric nailed (literally) to a backing. Rather, they take two pieces of fabric for each “channel” : the surface/decorative fabric and a sturdy backing, in my case tan twill (for the backing, the previous upholsterer used nasty leftovers that clearly had been taken off of someone else’s old furniture…ick!).

Each channel is cut separately with a matching backing piece. These two pieces are sewn wrong sides together. Then you sew each channel to the next on the seamline. Then, you slice open the backing fabric up the center of the channel (being careful NOT to cut the front!) and insert batting. In my chair, they used old fashioned cotton upholstery batt, which these days is getting hard to find. One place tried to sell me something as “cotton”, but when it got here it was icky old polyester that will matt down….they said everyone uses it now. Wrong. That’s why most modern furniture looks good for maybe a year, then looks like….well, I won’t use that kind of language on this blog. Ahem. I finally found a local upholster who had the real cotton stuff and would sell me some…nice man!

Anyway, you make a “sausage” of cotton batt, place it inside the channel, overlap the sliced open backing, and sew shut. Here’s a close-up, with the top corner turned back so you can see the stuffing. By overlapping the backing, the back side is narrower, creating the rounded front side of the channel (think of a cross-section of the channel as a “D” shape, which the flat side going to the back of the chair).

Here, I’ve turned the seat back over to show you what it looks like with just two of the channels stuffed, and the rest unfilled.

I also finished the seat cushion, and have cut out the remaining pieces. I think I am done with the sewing, and once the kids are in school on Monday (and some Christmas presents ordered in the morning), I will head back down to the living room (the chair is WAY too big and heavy to haul upstairs) to start re-assembling it, from the seat on up.

And Eli has been asking to make snickerdoodles, so instead of disrupting the sanctum of football on Sunday with nail-pounding, we made cookies. Here is the master chef at work (mostly nibbling the sweet butter-sugar-flour batter):

And tomorrow, the other notebook covers….

3 Responses to “The Chair–channel backs, and cookies with Eli”

  1. joyce Says:

    You are so ambitious to recover such a complex chair. It is going to be beautiful when it is done though.

  2. Anonymous Says:

    Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! I wondered how they did that, thank you for sharing!

    I’m still in awe of you tackling this project. And here’s a hearty second to your comment about “but everyone uses [this inferior stuff] these days” – yep, that’s why there are so many sofas at the DUMP!! I’ve just had to go online to buy horsehair braid – not even real horsehair, just poly – because it seems to be impossible to source here. Humph! Where’s their pride in craftsmanship, huh? I guess that’s why we DO IT OURSELVES…

    Oops, rant over!

    I had never heard of snickerdoodles until I got my copy of Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a domestic goddess” baking book – now they’re my favourite bikkie.

  3. sueeeus Says:

    I love your floors! And snickerdoodles! Yum!