A question for the furniture upholstery peoples

[gene]

Left outside panel, right outside panel, and back outside panel.

These 3 panels on fully upholstered chairs and sofas, traditionally have a webbing, padding, and then the face fabric.

I am seeing more new furniture that only has the face fabric and no webbing and no padding. There may be padding of some type only over the wooden frame parts.

webbing: woven or non woven fabric, woven or non woven plastic, chipboard.
padding: cotton, poly batting, foam.
face fabric

I have seen where a padding type material has been used to serve as both the webbing and padding.

What do you do, and what do you use, when reupholstering these 3 panels?

Does anyone only use the face fabric?

I use tightly woven fabric from other jobs (new fabric left over) for the webbing, poly batting, and then the face fabric. I will occasionally use cotton for the padding, but I seem to be able to manipulate poly batting easier than cotton.

Thanks for your thoughts.

gene

[sofadoc]

I also use leftover material from other jobs as the webbing. Then  I pad with whatever padding that I have available, such as scraps of poly batting, 1/4" foam, cotton, etc. Case-by-case basis. Depends on the outer fabric.

I've also seen a lot of furniture with little or no webbing/padding on the outsides.

A winery down the street from me sat 5 huge pallets of new cardboard sheets out by their dumpster.
I scooped them up in a flash. I sometimes use them in place of webbing/material on outside arms.

If the piece previously had the stiff, thin poly as padding I will re-use it if I can pick it off easily.

[MinUph]

I too try to reuse outside padding. I also use whatever fabrics I have for the underlayment and if new is needed Dacron. I will end the Dacron or whatever padding I use at the bottom of the rail I like the sharp edge. I also end my fill at the top edge of where a skirt will go so I get a nice flat even tack line.
  If you place a yard stick on edge from the top back rail to the bottom back rail you will notice a pronounced space in the central area. There is sometimes no need for padding here it could be ended 1/4 of the way down from the top and no noticeable difference will be seen.

[gene]

Thank you for the replies.

2 reasons that I can think of for using a webbing and then padding are:

1. More protection for the face fabric in case someone should kick, or something should hit, the side or back of the furniture.

2. It keeps the fabric from hanging loose and waving. Often I can tell if new furniture does not have a webbing or padding by how the fabric hangs loose and waves when touched or the furniture is moved. Sometimes the fabric appears to not have been attached tight enough, and sometimes I think the fabric may have stretched once it was attached, by having gotten stretched when it got hit by something or maybe just from the humidity.


Some fabrics, such as microfibers, have very little stretch and are often stronger than the fabric that I am using for webbing.

Are there any times when you put padding only on the wood frame and then apply the face fabric? This would save time. With specific fabrics, do you think this would be as good as using webbing and padding?

Thanks for your thoughts,

gene