Upholstery Fabric in a Nutshell by: Shelly Miller Leer

Teaching you everything you need to know about upholstery fabric is a class in itself. I won’t get into technical textile information and the double rub discussion, but hopefully this will cover enough material (haha! Get it?) so that you’ll feel comfortable shopping for your stunning fabrics. Remember, this is in a nutshell.

Upholstery fabric is generally 54”-55” wide and comes on a big cardboard round bolt, unlike apparel fabric which is on flat cardboard. Also, apparel and quilting fabrics are usually 44”-45” wide.

Many upholstery weight fabrics are a plain or flat weave cotton with sometimes vibrant and fun prints screen-printed on top. What this means is that the design is just on the surface, it’s not woven into the fabric as a design or texture. Screen-printed fabrics are fine for our first project, however they are a bit stiff and they do tend to fray on cut edges. They are reasonable in price and can add very interesting patterns into a room. If you love it—go for it!! When you’re trying to upholster more contoured furniture, these fabrics can be a nightmare to work with.

Fabric clerks will sometimes misinform you and say that certain (obvious) drapery weight fabrics are upholstery fabrics. Well, they are 54” wide and come on the big cardboard roll. But they can be too lightweight and too delicate for upholstery. Remember, the fabric you staple onto your chair seat or back, remove staples and readjust, should not snag or pull or rip. You need durability, but probably not ‘thick as mud’ durability.

After you get through a number of upholstery projects, you’ll begin to understand the ‘hand’ a fabric has. It’s very difficult to explain, but when shopping, take a corner of the fabric in your hands, feel it, pull it crosswise and lengthwise (on the grain) to see if you get any kind of stretch. A flat weave cotton and linen will not have much give. Pull it on the diagonal too, that will give you a really good idea of its workability. Fabrics that have texture or design woven in are more forgiving, especially for the beginner. But here’s the dilemma, woven in designs and textures tend to cost more and this is your first foray into upholstering. You don’t want to spend too much until you have a little confidence in your rapidly growing skills.

How much fabric do you need? Well, I have no way of knowing that without measuring each of your chairs and knowing your foam thicknesses, so I’ll show you how to estimate yardage in an upcoming lesson. You can also refer to the Fabric Yardage Chart in the Resources menu.

Most all upholstery fabrics are meant to be used as they come off the roll. What this means is that if you place your roll of fabric on a big table with the roll away from you and the cut edge right up to your belly button, that is usually how the design, pattern or print are supposed to be placed on your furniture. (There are exceptions, like if the fabric is rolled upside down.) But, for the most part, that will be the case.

If the fabric has a nap, like velvets. Velvets and corduroys should have the nap running from the top or back of the furniture towards you. If you run your hand down them, one direction will feel smooth and the other will be rougher. The softness should run from back to front, top to bottom. If the nap gets mixed up, it can be a mess. Let’s just not use a napped fabric unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

And finally, here is one more wrench for me to throw in the works. Some fabrics with very specific directional designs or motifs are woven, or printed so that you can cover great long benches or sofas with one long piece of fabric and not have to seam a few widths together to cover the expanse. This is because the design is either woven or printed on the fabric sideways. Usually, the pattern is right side up when looking at the unrolled fabric, with a selvedge on the left and a selvedge on the right. Selvedges are where the threads or fibers were hooked to side of the loom for weaving.

A railroaded fabric would be right side up when you look at it and there is a selvedge at the top, and a selvedge at the bottom. The design runs continuously for as many yards as there are on the bolt. The beauty of railroaded fabric is that you can cover wide pieces of furniture without having to seam together fabric that is only 54” wide. So, if you had a 65” sofa back, you may want to avoid seams, so you’d look for railroaded fabric.

For this first project, my advice is as follows: Keep your fabric choices fairly benign so that you can focus on the upholstery skills and not fret about the fabric design, at least for now. A good weight, color and hand will pay off in spades down the road.

Estimating Fabric Yardage:

Spool Ottoman: 2 ½ to 3 yards

Chair:

Now, here’s a rough formula for your yardage estimate. Measure two or three times, think it through and then measure again.

Width of fabric needed:

Width of your chair seat from bottom edge on the left to bottom edge on the right + 3” on each side for ‘pull’. This has to be measured after the new padding is in place.

Length (running down the fabric bolt from top to bottom) Same thing, measure from bottom of back chair seat rail to bottom of front rail + 3” on each side for pull. (After new padding)

NOTE: The 3” pull on all sides is an overestimate just to be safe. If you come up just a little shy of that 3” pull for each side, you can get by with a 2” or 2 ½ “ pull, but don’t try to get by with less than that, it will make your strain to get your fabric pulled and secured.

If you choose an obvious design, you’ll need extra if you want one area centered on your chair seat, inside back and outside back. And for later down the road, if you want to make covered welt cording, you’ll need more fabric for that, approximately ½ yard to ¾ yard.