Upholstery

Topics: •Tools for upholstery

• Materials for upholstery• Types of upholstery

Upholstery• the work of providing furniture, especially seats,

with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. • comes from the Middle English word upholder, which referred to

a tradesman who held up his goods. • The term is equally applicable to domestic, automobile,

airplane and boat furniture. • A person who works with upholstery is called an upholsterer; • an apprentice upholsterer is sometimes called an outsider or

trimmer. • Traditional upholstery uses materials like coil springs (post-

1850), animal hair (horse, hog & cow), coir, straw and hay, hessians, linen scrims, wadding, etc., and is done by hand, building each layer up.

• In contrast, modern upholsterers employ synthetic materials like Dacron and vinyl, serpentine springs, and so on.

Tools for Upholstery

Curved Needles

Used to sew edges & edge roll

Double pointed straight needle

Used for sewing stuffing materials & other sewing purposes

Regulator

Webbing stretcher

MADE OF LONG HARD

WOOD OF ¾” X 3 ½ X 7 ½ W/

SPURS OF NAILS DRIVEN

ON 1 END COVERED W/

ROUGH LEATHER

And is used to stretch the web

Upholstery pin

USED TO ANCHOR

SHEETS BEFORE SEWING OR

TACKING

Magnetic Tack Hammer

A one-faced magnetized hammer used to pick up tacks to start

them on the work.

Shears

To cut twine & coarse fabrics

Trestles (saw horse)

Materials for UpholsteryWEBBING – MADE FROM

COARSE WOVEN FIBER OR JUTE

Stretched across

the frame for

fastening coil

springs

Spread to form a flexible

base of a slip seat or back

Burlap is a cloth woven from coarse fiber of jute

abaca buri or other fiber

plants

siliconized polyester

carded fiber

Stuffing Material

Horse HairRice Straw

Polyester and

Cotton (scrap) fiber

Sewing Twine (Polyester)

made from flax

fiber.

Used in many sewing

operations (before final

covering)

Spring Twine – used for typing

the tops of springs in place

Tacks – smooth flat head used for general utility

Webbing Tacks – designed for fastening webbing

Desirable tack for fastening webbing is 12-

14 ounce tack,

for tack spring twine, use 8-10 ounce tack.

Steel upholstery spring

Leatherette covering

Final Covering

Leather Covering

Mohair Covering

TYPES OF UPHOLSTERY• Plain Pad Seat Type• Upholstery w/ Coil Spring• Wire Edge Coil Spring Upholstery• No-Sag Spring

Plain Pad Seat Type • simplest form of upholstery• merely making a ad or cushion on a wooden base

Webbing on Seat