Slipcovered Glider Chair

 

 

This chair is the Graham Glider by West Elm, which is gorgeous and comfy, but I am afraid of getting baby goo all over the nice grey velvet. I really want this chair to last for years to come.

 

Graham Glider by West Elm





So I decided to make a slip-cover for the chair (and matching bolster pillow). Going with my fantasy forest theme, I found this fabulous fabric at JoAnn's. Using coupons, I purchased the fabric for more than 50% off; the original price was $9.99/yard. It is a sturdy cotton and easy to pull off and throw in the wash if I need to.

 



 

 

Clearly I didn't have a sewing pattern, and I didn't want to fully reupholster the chair, just make a slip-cover, so I decided the best method to make this slipcover would be draping.

 

I draped fabric over the chair wrong-side out, and pinned it to the chair one piece at a time, starting from the back. At the seams I pinned two piece of fabric together, then pulled it off, sewed the seam and put it back on the chair to add another piece. I worked symmetrically, doing two seams on opposite sides at once. But I still ran back and forth between the nursery and sewing machine a lot.

 

When I finished the slipcover the way I wanted it, I serged all of the seams to reduce the selvages. I love how it turned out!

Chair Transformation

In my craft room I am trying to incorporate GREEN into the builder-beige palette so I figured that making a partial slipcover for sewing desk chair would be an easy way to bring green into the room without making a large, permanent commitment to the color.

Every once in a while I discover something fabulous in the remnants bin at the local JoAnn's. It's a great way to get a yard or less of expensive fabric for a big discount. The only catch is that you then have to figure out what to do with that small amount of fabric!

So I had this piece of green and white decorator fabric which was obviously too small to make a curtain out of. I could have made pillows out of it, though I would have had to pair it with another fabric to get more than one substantial pillow. However, I recalled one of those home improvement TV shows where the designer took a family's old dining set and made these little slipcases for the tops of the chairs to instantly update them and make them fresh and white. I decided I would try that project myself!

It took about 30 minutes to make my own slipcover for the chair in my crafting room. It probably would have been a lot faster if I didn't waste time figuring out how to do it, but once I figured it out it was really easy and I could have replicated it quickly if I had more chairs (and more fabric) to go through. This is definately something you could do in a batch to quickly transform your dining set, or just decorate an accent chair or desk chair like I did.

The"before" picture, from June 2010. The poor chair looks naked.

The "after" picture.

If I ever get bored with green I can make a new one in PINK or maybe ORANGE... whatever color is the new BLACK.