Dining chairs - Finally

Alright, here they are! I showed off my pride and joy at my family bbq yesterday. I worked on it all Saturday night, and I guess I'm happy with the final product... but I still have an artist's mind - nothing is ever finished!

Anyway - here they are! 

My process was relatively simple - most upholstery tutorials directed you to use a hot glue gun.

I chose to use a high heat gun, so that I had a little more time to lay the trim straight, but either would work.

I was lucky and went to the fabric store at the time when they had a 50% off sale - win. However, I will warn you that trim is very expensive. I ended up spending $40 for 16 meters of both trims - keep cost in mind when you look into upholstering anything, and think about the lineal feet or meters you will need.

I bought both a thicker trim (something you would use on a backpack or something heavy duty like that), and a normal upholstery trim (apparently it is called "gimp"). I bought the two because I couldn't cut my fabric close enough to the staple line - I'll have to work on that if I plan on doing this again in the future.

Here are my progress photos...

This is the trim's start and corners - It took some patience to figure out how I could get the corners to lay, but I think it turned out okay. I also made sure the ends didn't fray by using a little glue on the open ends (it would be better to use something like "no fray" from a fabric store, but I forgot to grab it in the frenzy).

One chair finished phase one - I had two different kinds of chairs, the one above, and the one below.

Here's phase one completely done. I sat on a little stool the whole time! I would recommend a pillow for your tushie. This takes a while, and a lot of patience. Take breaks as necessary, and don't work tired!

Here's phase 2 going up (corners are much easier on gimp, it bends to your will).

I don't know why but from far all I can think of is a little girl's homemade dress. Probably because my mother always put some kind of swirly trim on everything she made me. Bless her.

Done! I am a little proud...