Recovering Chairs

The word “recovering” is defined in this post as “to restore or repair the upholstery or padding on a piece of furniture”. I am recovering the two seats in my room, a rectangular sewing bench, and my desk chair. For the last several years, a muted red, white, and blue striped fabric with thin green and yellow stripes running throughout has adorned my bedroom seats. I recently decided to recover them for two reasons; one, because it struck me that the fabric was not at all pretty; and two, because the covers were worn and the straps were torn. I use straps to tie my upholstery projects onto the furniture, since I don’t have any upholstery tools. . .yet. I found some really pretty fabric at Wal-Mart’s sewing-department-going-out-of-business-sale. It is slightly lighter than a royal blue, with embellished interwoven flowers of the same color. I set to work during the last part of Christmas break, and I am finishing up the project this week. To make these covers, I used the old seat padding as a pattern. I cut the seat covers out leaving the standard 5/8 inch seam allowance. My sewing bench was easy to cut, since it’s a rectangle. My desk chair, however, was a little more difficult, being a warped trapezoid shape. I also cut 16 straps, 8 for each chair. I then went to sew the 8 separate thin straps for my sewing bench seat cover. (For some reason, I sit more often at my sewing bench, and therefore that was of more importance than the desk chair cover.) Once I sewed these straps, I had to turn them. Since the straps are more like cords, I tried to use my turner tool. It kept poking through my stitching since it was very thin. I then opened my sewing bin and selected my first turning tool, a slightly thicker stick of metal. I acquired this when one day I noticed the boys playing with an interesting piece of metal. I do not know where it came from or what it used to be a piece of, but it is about 1/8 of an inch wide, 10 inches long, rather flat, and rounded at one end. I spied that metal and thought, “Hm, that would be a perfect tool for turning small sewing projects”. After they were done playing with it, I obtained it and stashed it in my sewing bin for future use. I have had this stick of metal for over 3 years now and it has worked well on many occasions! Using this tool, it was much easier to turn the straps. I attached two of these straps to each corner of the seat cover. I decided to save the old covers as extra padding so once I had the straps sewn to each corner, I then sewed the outer layer on, creating a big pocket, and inserted my old seat cover into it. I then ran a close topstitch around the whole cover, and tied it on to my sewing bench. My sewing bench chair does not have many places to tie things to, so I take a few thumbtacks, and mash them through the straps into the wooden bench from underneath, where it doesn’t show, and that holds it on the chair better. Now I am off to finish sewing my desk chair cover.