Using Cardboard Upholstery Strips

If you haven’t noticed, it takes me about a thousand years  to 1) get around to doing a project and 2) getting around the sharing it on the blog. I picked up this mid-century Gangso Mobler set last June.

That’s right, June.

Well, whatever. It’s been done since February and is now in the shop up at Woodstock so I thought I would share a quick tip on using cardboard upholstery strips.

I have so many pet peeves and one of them is janky upholstery underneath something; chairs, benches, whatever. I personally feel like I would be judged poorly if someone picked up a piece that I did and it had a bunch of jaggedy, frayed ends every where. And these are so easy to use that there’s really no excuse not to do it neatly.

Cardboard tack strip comes in 20 yard rolls from Joann for about 12 bucks. I have bought one roll ever in my life and am still working on the same roll. The first thing you want to do before you start to unroll it, is run a couple hot glue lines from the center to the outside. This stuff will unroll like a crazymonster and you’ll be cussing. The hot glue lines will keep it all in tact and you’ll keep your sanity.

I started with the bench seat, and used a white fabric under this delicious Robert Allen for DwellStudio fabric. Yes, the liner fabric is a little janky, but that’s about to change. Lay out your fabric and make sure you have everything where you want it, patterns lined up, etc.

Cut a length of your cardboard tack strip and lay it on your fabric.

Fold your fabric over the tack strip…

Then fold the fabric over the piece you are working on, and staple.

That’s it.

The first side is fairly easy, if you don’t feel you can keep your fabric stationary while doing this, you can use one or two staples on the opposite side of your project to hold the fabric until you get to the other side.

When you get to the other side, repeat the same process, pulling taut as you go.

Looks so much better than raggedy ol’ edges, yes? If you happen to working on another type of DIY upholstery project that has curves and such and tack strips aren’t the way to go, you might want to try adding a dust cover, which is also super simple and will cover those jagged edges.

Here’s the Gangso Mobler set before:

The gory details:

And the set after:

There is some minor wear consistent with age and use…

And just because I saw a white concrete wall on my way to the shop…

This set is available for sale at Woodstock Market.