How to Make Tucks When Upholstering a Chair

You have several old chairs that are in desperate need of a fresh new look. You've decided to reupholster them, and you're already well on your way to giving your furniture a facelift. Unfortunately, you're having a little trouble making your work look polished and professional. The trick to making your furniture look as if it was professionally reupholstered is to create tucks in the fabric at each corner or curve of the furniture.

Upholstery fabric
Tacks
Furniture staples
Upholstery stapler

Instructions

- 1
  Place your upholstery fabric on the furniture that you are recovering. Make sure you have enough fabric to cover the entire piece of furniture.
- 2
  Tack the fabric in place by gently hammering the fabric to the underside of the furniture with tacks. The tacks are just to hold the fabric in place while you work, so make sure they are easy to remove.
- 3
  Select a corner of the furniture to begin working on. Remove any tacks holding the fabric at that corner. Pull the fabric tightly over the furniture and pinch it together. Place your pointer finger in the middle of the pinched fabric, and fold it there to create two separate tucks. Depending on the size and curvature of the furniture, you may need to create more than two tucks at each corner. For instance, the rounded arm of a sofa may require many tucks.
- 4
  Fold the left side of the excess fabric down onto the underside of the furniture, and staple it in place. There should be no slack in the fabric.
- 5
  Fold the right side of the excess fabric over the tuck you created in step four. Pull the fabric tight, and staple it in place so that there is no slack in the fabric. Repeat until all the tucks have been stapled down tightly.
- 6
  Repeat steps three to five until you have secured the upholstery fabric on each corner and curve of your furniture.

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