Tufted Wall Panelling

Tufting is an art, or can be considered such. There are subtleties within the art of tufting that one can only master through practice. This is our third attempt at tufting, yes third.

Anna and I have an immense advantage in our field of work, that advantage is called pattern making. Pattern making allows you to be able to engineer product to be made as if for  mass production. These tufted panels are "engineered", designed from scratch to go together like clockwork... Every last detail is mathematically calculated out,  designed to come together seamlessly. But they were still a little bit of work... Below Anna is preparing the foam panels. I designed these from two densities and two weights of foam. The first layer is a 2lb soft foam, the second layer is a 1.2lb hard layer. this is to give rigidity but more than anything to save on weight. She is marking the positioning of the tufting once we begin upholstery...

Here's Anna again... this time she is preparing the wood for drilling. When tufting these panels it is critical to mark the holes int he wood in the exact position of the tufting, so everything would line up.

Below I am doing what I do best... drilling and applying suction at the same time. You can see by my shirt (courtesy of Anna), that unlike the peace loving American Government, and the peace loving Russian Government, and the peace loving Chinese Government and the peace loving Israeli Government, et al I hate ALL nuclear weapons. I believe peace doesn't include weapons that could potentially destroy my children.

Aha! Pattern Making! Here the pattern is being designed by me, I am so good at it after all.

Below we have the layout, you can see darts everywhere, soon you'll see why!

All pieces are cut and ready for sewing.

You can see the that the darts have all been sewn out, look at how the fabric has some incredible texture... this could translate interestingly into a curtain! I think so!

Enoki Mushrooms in the Workroom! No Silly, they are just buttons!

Okay, covers are sewn, buttons are made, foam has been attached to wood, batting added... ready to upholster! Here needles are pushed through the holes in the wood, which correspond to the markings on the foam which in turn correspond to the pattern that was sewn ultra precisely!

The rear view... you can see the cords from the enoki mushrooms pulled through the back, through the wood frame. By the way, we only use awesome wood, not OSB which seems standard in the upholstery trade these days!

The cords are pulled through and stapled to the wood, the buttons tension the material and create the shape!

the fabric is stapled as such, its complicated involving the attachment of the fabric to certain predetermined points on the wood yadda yadda yadda, suffice to say i have already done the math for you.

Wow, that was fast! So the panel is done. I should tell you these are for behind a bed... 

INSTALLATION DAY! I used a double french cleat system, JRail, whatever. I installed the rails onto the walls, the panels just mount onto them... :) So easy!

Here's Rudy! Rudy possesses muscles, sometimes it is essential to have muscles for this kind of work. 

Rudy is arranging the panels so they align perfectly, what he doesn't know is that he doesn't need to... all the math has been figured out for him! Maybe he's just inspecting my handiwork!

Voila!