Wednesday, January 30, 2013

How to Tuft furniture

 This leopard print beauty has been living with us for awhile now.  She has her own post here if you desperately need to know how she came to be with us....
I re-tufted the seat cushions today.
this is a good "before" photo...
She has a hard life with our two littles wallowing all over her, and the buttons have started to mysteriously work their way OFF of the couch...
I cannot for the life of me imagine how that is happening.....hmmmm
So while re-tufting these seat cushions I thought I'd share how I do it.... 
Supplies :
One large upholstery needle mine is 10" or 25.4cm
two fabric covered buttons one for each side
24" piece of linen or cotton thread
Thread a button onto the string and thread BOTH ends of the string through the eye of the needle...

Pass needle through the cushion...
This was actually the hardest part.  The foam can be really dense so these took some real effort....
Pull the needle all the way through to the other side of the cushion....
Pull the two pieces of thread all the way through the cushion, and remove the needle.....
Thread the second button on to ONE of the strings and then I pull the string to make a long and short side....
Take your long thread and make a slip knot around the short thread 
(my short thread is the straight piece in the center there)
I used to refer to this with my art students as a "pretzel" knot because it should look like a little pretzel as you pull it tighter....
Tighten that up as tight as possible around the short string...
This is what helps you get that nice deep tufting and if it's too loose the short string will keep slipping back instead of tightening up....
Pull on your short string until you get your button as tight as you want it....the idea of course is to have all your buttons the same depth into the cushions....
Finish it up with a regular double knot (the above photo twice) but you want to pull on that until it goes all the way underneath the button each time.
Snip it off right at the edge or even a little bit under the button.....
That's it...I thought I'd finish with a photo showing the difference between those I had re-tufted and those I hadn't (the two buttons on the back left)....
A pretty big difference in how they look and I was even able to readjust the cushions inside to straighten them back out too....
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1 comment:

  1. Seriously...I could eat tose youngins UP!!! Mighty with her helmet..HILARIOUS!!! I have a bench I want to make a cushion for and it would look great tuffted I might have to try!

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