A stylized wingback

An antique wingback gets a stylized spin with a circular theme.

Upholstery Journal | February 2009

by Kelly Frush

When Amanda Brown and Lizzie Joyce, upholsterers and owners of Spruce Upholstery in Austin, Texas, found an antique wingback armchair at an estate sale, they jumped on the opportunity to reinvent the piece using their shop’s trademark style.

Typical work at Spruce Upholstery isn’t typical at all—Brown and Joyce strip antique furniture down to their frames and build them back up using stylish, modern fabrics and materials.

The duo stripped everything off the wingback, exposing the frame, then painted the legs and built up the springs and the padding. During that process, they formulated an idea for a circle pattern using individual pieces, and started putting it together.

“Making the fabric was the biggest part of the process,” says Brown. “We had to make each circle individually and make sure they communicated with the other pieces on the chair. It was really a piece-by-piece process.”

Brown and Joyce chose black canvas for the cover and appliquéd pieces of white felt to create the circular pattern. Just applying the felt circles took a couple days.

“The project was about 40 hours of sewing,” Joyce notes. “It took about a total of four days to put it together.”

But both upholsterers knew their time spent on the piece was worth it when the work on the wingback was finally finished, and the circular pattern was a success. “This was something we had wanted to try before,” says Brown. “We really wanted to try an unconventional approach to your typical wingback chair.”

Brown and Joyce encourage other upholsterers to take similar nontraditional approaches to upholstery.

“You can do something nontraditional with a traditional piece,” Brown suggests. “You don’t have to replicate it exactly; you can restyle it and use your imagination to do something completely different.”

Do you have a project you'd like us to feature in Save My Seat? Send details of your project, along with before-and-after pictures in the form of print photos or electronic images (tif, eps or jpeg of 300 dpi or greater) to Kelly Frush, Associate Editor, Upholstery Journal, 1801 County Road B West, Roseville, MN 55113, or e-mail them to krfrush@ifai.com. All images become the property of Upholstery Journal and cannot be returned.

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