Pull Up a (Tufted) Seat

I've been wanting to add some extra seating to our kitchen table for a while and when I saw an ugly old padded bench at the thrift store a few months ago, I knew that it was the perfect size and scale to work with my kitchen table.

It's been a while since I've rehabbed any thrift store finds and I think I was going through a bit of spray-paint withdrawal. So yes, I spray painted in my basement in January.

Making over a bench like this one is really easy. If you want a complete tutorial, you can read this post where I gave detailed directions on a previous project.

A quick summary is:
Remove the seat (it's held on with screws from underneath)
Clean, prime and paint the wood parts
Recover the seat
Reattach the seat
Take pictures

And if you can do it while sitting in front of one of these, all the better.

This time, I wanted to try something a little different and tuft the top of the seat because I love the look of a tufted chair. Let me show you how I did it. I don't know if I used the Tufting Institute (I made that up) approved tufting method. As usual, I just kind of figured out how I wanted it to look and how to make that happen.

First, I took all of the fabric and padding off of the top of the bench. Then I drilled two holes in the wood part of the seat where I'll want the tufting buttons to go.

I reused the foam padding because it was still in good shape and covered it with a couple of layers of batting for extra fluff.

Then I covered the whole seat with the new fabric.

Now for the tufting...I wanted to use buttons covered in the same fabric as the seat. You can find self-covering buttons at the craft or fabric store and they're really easy to use.

Take a long piece of upholstery thread (or any thick, heavy thread) and make a slip-knot through the button shank. Then pull both pieces of thread through an upholstery needle (or other long needle).

Using the needle, pull the tread through the seat then through the hole that you drilled previously. Repeat for any other buttons.

Turn the seat over and pull the thread as tightly as you want your tufting to be. You're just eyeballing this until it looks right. You have both ends of the thread that you can secure by pulling them through a regular button and tying to secure.

Those directions are probably hard to follow. I hope the pictures help.