Upholstery Seattle sells fabrics in Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Issaquah, Redmond, Ballard, Queen Anne, Magnolia, Capitol Hill, Bainbridge Island, Shoreline, Kenmore, Woodinville, Mill Creek, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Renton, Kent, Des Moines, Federal Way and Tacoma. We also sell fabrics nationwide via the Internet. There's no sales tax on any purchase if you live outside the state of Washington. Contact Tony or Michelle for special Internet pricing on select fabrics.
Focus on Fabrics
Hunting for a faux animal skin fabric can be tricky. Most mills carry a standard yellow and black tiger stripe. Other manufacturers dabble in more exotic colors and patterns. The hard part is finding a faux skin that's durable and looks convincing up close.
One of our customers recently selected two excellent faux skin fabrics for a reupholstery project — Zebra M8271 manufactured by Barrow and Duralee's DP61208-623. The zebra fabric is polyester, the faux cheetah is made from cotton. Both look and feel great. Both are rugged.
As you might expect, faux animal skin is not the easiest fabric to work with. It can be challenging to match fabric seams when a pattern design is erratic. In addition, the cheetah skin had to be hand stitched at the corners and serged at the bottom to prevent fraying.
The extra care required to reupholster this chair and ottoman paid off. Both pieces turned out great!
When upholstering furniture bound for the glitzy Côte d'Azur, you do things a little differently.
One of our customers recently sent us an exceptional collection of furniture, including an early 19th century chaise lounge, to be upholstered and then shipped to Monaco. If the pieces were being upholstered for a Seattle home, we might have recommended more toned-down fabrics. But, this furniture was destined for the south of France where flamboyant colors and Byzantine furniture fit right in.
The project took several days to complete. As you can see, everything turned out great. Fabrics used for the slip cover and settee posed the only significant challenge. Brightly colored, embroidered fabrics such as these are typically used for pillows, seatbacks and other accessories. Maintaining fabric alignment while matching an intricate pattern across the entire settee is literally impossible. Fortunately, the rich bullion braid covered many of visible seams, minimizing alignment issues.
Properly aligning a print fabric can be tricky and enormously time consuming. Often times the customer wants a chair reupholstered with a specific fabric even though its pattern doesn't quite work with the chair's geometry.
Before Pattern Alignment
After Pattern Alignment
This sturdy wingback chair isn't quite an antique, but it's well worth saving. Instead of replacing the fabric with a similar velvet or microfiber, the owner wanted it reupholstered in a lively print. As you can see, a series of large, spade-shaped figures dominates the fabric they selected.
Centering the spade-shaped figures on the seat deck, chair back and down the sides was hard. It was even more difficult to align the pattern inside the arms, down the front and around the corners while maintaining proper spacing through the deep diamond tufting. As you can see, the pattern not only lines up perfectly, the two sides mirror each other. This wingback is a great example of how the craftsmen at Upholstery Seattle properly align a difficult fabric.
Here's a great example of how a simple thing like switching fabric can dramatically transform a piece of furniture. This basic, snow white ottoman was designed to blend into a room. Using the customer's tapestry fabric, we created a snug-fitting slipcover with lavender lining and double kick pleats. By choosing a slipcover instead of new upholstery, the customer can easily go back and forth between the original look and the new one.
We love the zebra chenille used to reupholster the chaise, but chenille fabric tends to fray at the edge. Before finishing the job, we need to reinforce the edge. It's time consuming, but it makes a big difference.
Using a pneumatic gun (above left), we staple thin strips of heavy gauge cardboard over the fabric edge. The stiff cardboard holds the chenille in place, preventing the fibers from fraying.
After trimming the edge with a razor blade, we're ready to hot-glue the gimp trim. The gimp -- a dark French scroll -- nicely compliments the zebra chenille.
Matching Print Fabrics & Weaves
Breakfast nooks used to be upholstered in vinyl because it was durable and easy to clean. Today’s fabrics are so versatile, vinyl is no longer necessary. More and more of our clients are making a fashion statement by matching different types of "breakfast nook friendly" fabrics in fun and interesting ways.
Before visiting our Ballard showroom, where you'll find thousands of fabrics, it's a good idea to browse textile mill web sites for ideas. You'll find this indoor/outdoor, four color print in Duralee's Web Site .
The Duralee print is a spun polyester with the soft feel of a cotton blend. A solid colored fabric that picks up the print's green and brown tones would be an excellent match. A more stylish alternative might be a tweed.
This tri-color tweed from Charlotte Fabrics not only picks up the print's colors, it provides a nice counterpoint texture.
The tweed is 100% Olefin, so it's extremely durable, colorfast and comfortable. It's also resistant to stains, mildew, abrasion and sunlight. For all these reasons, the tweed is perfect for the seat pads. We upholster the back cushions with the softer, less durable print.
