How to Slipcover a Chair

Truth be told, I hate making slipcovers! And I especially hate making two of them. But we inherited some lovely old chairs with a lot of sentimental value for my husband, but currently upholstered seemingly in honor of the Washington Redskins. UGH.

We are planning to use these chairs as the end chairs in the dining room and that current color scheme will just not work. And the gold chair is really dirty from years of wear and tear. It's not currently in the budget to spend a couple hundred on having them reupholstered (I'm thinking when that happens, we'll pick a gray velvet) so instead I hopped over to Ikea and bought some of their fabric for $5 a yard.

Sidenote: nearly all fabric stores in Houston (save for Joann Fabrics, which is terrible) have stopped selling fabric. At least upholstery fabric. You only option is to order it, which is a pain and means you are unlikely to score a huge bargain with clearance fabric.

Anyhoozles, the Ikea fabric was quite cheap and for $20 I bought 4 yards hoping it would cover both chairs.

On to production. My slipcover mantra is pin and sew and pin and sew.

First I made a pattern using old fabric. I laid pieces on each section of the chair and cut them out roughly the same size.

I used pins to hold the pieces in place on vertical elements.
Then I started to cut the fabric. When using a print you want to pay attention to where the pattern falls on the pieces, being especially careful if you are using something like a toile so that nothing ends up being upside down. This print was so bold, I really didn't worry about centering flowers on the seat cushion or seat back. Also I realized pretty soon on that I'd be really tight on fabric, so I didn't have a lot of leeway to center things.

You can see from the image that I gave myself a pretty big seam allowance (like 1.5 inches) this is because my methods are very far from perfect and I didn't want a tight fitting slipcover.

Then you start assembling the pieces together. You put the fabric face down on the chair and pin the seams and edges. Then you sew through the pins. You want to allow a good amount of extra fabric on the seat cushion so that you can tuck that excess into the gulleys of the seat. Otherwise, when you sit down the seams could rip open.

This gets repeated over and over again, until you are finished. These chairs have wood edging and I wanted to keep them exposed, so I made little fabric tabs to keep the two sides together. I was going to have them button (see the 3 buttons on the floor) but I didn't have enough for two chairs and buttons are so damn expensive, I ditched that idea for now. These covers are really just a stop gap for the short term.

So there you have the almost finished chair (I can still see some pins!) Now to make the second cover. UGH. It's so hard for me to make two things identical. I'm quite sure one will end up much tighter fitting than the other. C'est la vie I suppose.