We have this serviceable but old chair that sits on the sun porch. The sunporch was totally redecorated by my husband, 22 year old step-daughter, and me over Memorial Day week 2012. The roof was recently replaced, so there was only one thing left to do. Recover the chair. I had purchased a slipcover for the pillow back sofa. That was too big a project for me to tackle when I could buy a cover for under $100. The chair, however, is not a normal shape. At least, not as far as commercially made slipcovers are concerned.

Since I had to buy cotton duck to cover 2 of the pillows for the sofa, I bought an extra 4 yards. It turned out to be exactly enough. I also planned exactly where I would have to put velcro strips to hold the whole thing on. I am not a fan of those adorable little bow ties, and I wanted this to look as tailored as possible.

I did a bucketload of searches online to find instructions for making my own slipcover. The best one I found suggested laying the fabric over each section of the chair and tracing a pencil line along the cording. I pinned the fabric to the chair so it wouldn’t slip, traced the cording and then cut the fabric about an inch bigger than that to have enough for a half inch seam allowance and hopefully a little extra in case the fabric shrank later.

I should, perhaps, take this moment to tell you that I had pre-washed the fabric and dried it in a hot dryer in order to minimize future shrinkage.

I started with the front and the back, not tapering the sides too much so it would be easy to actually slip the cover over the top of the chair. I stopped the seams right above the arms, which I wanted to leave exposed. Continue reading…