Expert: Mark H. Miller - 8/2/2008

Question
I want to change my dining room chair seat from a loose cushion seat attached by tassels to an attached upholstered seat. Any advice?
Thanks.

Answer
Well I just advised someone not to change their traditional style sofa to a contemporary one.  Your question is a little different, if I had dining chairs with cushions attached with tassels or snaps etc. I would do exactly what you intend to do.  By now you are probably tired of the cushions not staying in place.

All you need to do is add padding material to the existing seat to compensate for the missing cushions.  To do that measure from the floor to where the center of the seat will be when it has been changed to a "tight seat"  the height should be 18 inches. If the padding material inside the existing cushions is good quality foam you could even leave that inside and then add extra cotton batting or Dacron over the top of that to give it a more luxurious look.

So most likely you will just have to add 1 or 2 inches of foam padding, wrap the total of all the padding material with some bonded Dacron to help it stay in place, and then upholster the seat, vision something that looks sort of like a mushroom cap.  The Dacron batting and foam are available in most stores that sell upholstery fabrics. It looks nice if you place a welt/cording around the perimeter at the base of the seat,  you can even tack tassels or straps to give the appearance of a cushion that is attached with tassels if that goes better with the style of the chair.  And most important you have not done anything that changes the frame, if the chairs are antique or period you can easily go back to the old look.  So my advice is go for it and change the loose cushion seats to tight seats.

I hope this helps.

Mark Miller.