Re-upholstering a press buck

A while ago I bought an old press buck base from a friend. She had already stripped it from the old and dirty covers but never got around fixing it. I needed a press buck for my tailoring and this base meant that I didn’t need to start making it from a scratch.

Here is the base. It is about 60 cm long and 25 cm wide at the widest point. Markings underneath show that it once belonged to a local school.

The first thing to do was to make a big cushion cover for the sawdust filling. I used the press buck cover top as a pattern and cut the pieces out of cotton shirting. Then, I sewed a flat pillowcase leaving one end open.

I got the sawdust from the pet aisle of the grocery store. My sewing guru, Michele, adviced me to pound the sawdust as tightly as possible.

I added the sawdust layer by layer and pound each layer with all my strength using a potato masher. If you do this, you’ll notice how at some point the sawdust inside the pillow condenses so that the vibrations from the pounding travel through the whole pillow. That’s when the sawdust is dense enough. I also tried to lift the sawdust from the original packaging in big dense chunks which reduced the amount of work I had to do. To make pounding easier, I twisted the opening shut and pounded through the fabric:

When I was finished, I was dripping in sweat and tired. After resting a bit, I sewed the opening shut by hand and flattened the pillow with some more pounding.

I have been saving an old wool blanket for just this purpose. I cut two pieces of it and wrapped them around the sawdust pillow. Then, I tightened the wool around the pillow with huge basting stitches.

Between the layers of wool, I added a little bit cotton wadding, just around the bottom edge to stabilise the pillow.

Then I fastened the top layer of wool just like I had done with the first layer.

The press buck is starting to look pretty nice. Now I only needed the cover.

I bought green cotton velveteen (100 % cotton) to make the cover. On a whim, I also bought black leather trim and brass furniture studs. I thought that as I was probably going to be staring at this press buck for some years, I could make it look nice, too!

At home, I used a stapler to fasten the fabric to the underside of the press buck. Then I finished the edge with the leather trim and studs. Those where not easy to hammer in as the wooden edge underneath was rounded and my fingers were a bit too big to hold the studs firmly while hammering. Luckily S came to help and I found her pretty good at this job. She hammered in half the studs for which job her tiny fingers were much better suited!

All the effort was well worth it, though. Here is the press buck looking really nice in his new coat!

I have been using it already a lot as I have been working on a 1901 wool jacket. My husband has also noticed that it doubles well as a foot stool when he wants to get his feet up in the evening! Well, the press buck is certainly sturdy enough for that use, too!

Thank you for reading and see you soon! More exciting projects are coming soon so stay tuned! Happy sewing!

Katja