Take Me to My Padded Room

Let’s talk padded walls. The first time I upholstered walls was for an extravagant little girl’s bedroom up in suburbia heaven. It was grueling work mainly because of the yards and yards of fabric, as well as the matching at the seams.

Upholstered walls kind of go in and out of style, and I’m happy to say that tufted walls are a design novelty right now. Now, let’s get something straight, there’s well done tufting and there’s awful cruddy tufting. All over Pinterest you can view tufting posts that get hundreds of repins and they are atrocious. Yes, I am a snob about this.

My theory on this is:

1.) Don’t try to teach people something you aren’t any good at; and

2.) If you’re shelling out the money for materials and tools, then do the job right.

I know firsthand that some people value the quick job over the well done, more time consuming and skill based job. Well, this will just never do. Living with the baggy, wrinkly, uneven diamond tufts that you see all over the place, even done by so called ‘quality’ furniture companies, would be more than I could tolerate. The solution has to be to educate people on what nice, professionally done deep buttoning looks like, and then put it up against the alternative, or vice versa.

Yikes!! This is the DON’T you’ll want to pay attention to. And the comments below the post were about how great this wall panel looks. Talk amongst yourselves about this.

www.archiverentals.com

Now, on the opposite end of the diamond tufted wall spectrum is the little boy’s room nursery wall. Hey hey, now this is not bad. Honestly, the fact that the upholstered panel (above) is a panel should really have made it look much better than the tufting that had to be accomplished right there on the wall (below).

http://eiramis.tumblr.com

Here’s another diamond tufted wall that is just beautiful. Remember, fabric on the walls catches dust and velvet fabric catches even more dust. An upholstered wall needs to be carefully dusted or vacuumed regularly.

Here you have a well done closet wall and door in the perfect place-a walk in closet. soft, luxurious, and cozy. This wall could really fit in any room. It’s got the key ingredients for tufting: uniform diamonds, snug, even folds, and uniform height of tufts. There’s so much to remember while you’re learning this upholstery skill, but it’s much fun and so therapeutic to do as long as you have the right instruction and materials. Once you learn the technique, you should set your standard at deep diamond tufts that are splendid and snug, not saggy.

bellevivir.com

And this deep buttoned alcove wall is practically a work of art, very well done! It would be a show stopper in any room in the house.

bjorkstudio.com

So, once you get the gist of doing deep buttoning well, you’ll be able to apply it all over the place.

I expect to see some pictures showing up on Instagram and Facebook of your very proper diamond tufting, not slipshod, baggy and wrinkled tufts. Come on people! Look what you can start learning how to do.

www.anthropologie.com