Reupholstering a Wing Chair {Part IV}

If you are reading this, you may or may not be at the point where you are covering the arms. If you are, I wanted to show you in pictures what it looks like, as I had a hard time with this.

Below you’ll see that this is the point where the fabric is taught over the arm, and you have to fold the remaining pieces around the front. You can decide on your desired fold, but make sure it’s the same on both sides.

Relief cuts are essential, and you’ll want to make them small and cut as needed, otherwise you may over cut.

I decided on doing a similar fold on the top and bottom of the front arm, and pinned before I stapled to ensure it was exactly what I wanted:

Under the arm, you’ll want to secure it with staples so you’re always working the fabric into a fitted position around the chair. You can also see the relief cut here that helps you fold it around the arm:

Once you are happy with your folds and that the fabric is pulled as tight as possible, staple away. As you probably saw when taking off the fabric, you can get a bit staple happy since you want to make sure it doesn’t come lose.

Here is what the chair looks like without pulling the back and making it taught. I haven’t finalized the back side so it looks baggy, but it, hopefully, won’t when I’m done!

You should still have the covers that go over your arm folds, here you can see I’ve already finished one side. The actual process of covering these little pieces of cardboard is actually quite easy, but nailing them back into the chair is not. Have patience! This is still the chair with lose fabric. I’ll show you the final, and stapled down, version in my next, and final post!