Bottom's Up

I have for some time now, wanted to re-cover the seat and back of my chair.  I 'inherited' the chair and it wasn't in a particular good condition then but over the years, the seat had slowly become more thread bare and the material on the top edge of the back was getting very thin also.

I found a pattern for a slip cover and put it to one side with a view to doing at some point when either I had to or finally had the time to do it.  I knew that I would need time to think about how I was going to do it as the chair I have is very different to the one shown on the pattern.  Let me explain......

'Normal' typing chairs have levers underneath the seat where the user can adjust the height and position of the seat along with maybe another for the position of the backrest.  However mine is slightly different - see photo.......

The seat does indeed move up and down but there is no lever; there are two 'locks' either side of the seat and they are quite bulky.  The pattern I had was for a slip cover which effectively had a drawstring type of fastening which, on examining my chair, would not work with my design of chair hence the reason to have to think about the pattern.

So, one rainy Sunday I bit the bullet and sorted through the (many!!!) boxes of material I had and came across a piece of heavy cotton which had a design in the middle I felt I could 'fussy cut' so that the design was centred on both the seat and the back rest.

I needed a pattern so began taking the chair apart so that I could (hopefully) remove the remains of the existing cover as a template.  I couldn't work out how to remove the seat pad from the seat. Several attempts, scraped knuckles and after I had unscrewed all the visible screws and getting nowhere, I finally lost my temper and 'attacked' it with a very large screwdriver.

Instead of it breaking or chipping, the seat unclipped.  What a surprise!  There are four clips which grip the metal edge of the seat in strategic places on the seat.  Well this was now so much easier!!!

The original cover had been stapled onto the seat pad and so again with the screwdriver, I attacked the material which, was so badly worn, came out of the staples very easily.  I then realised that the seat pad was really thin at the front of the seat.

Along time ago, my Mum wanted to recover her headboard and bought some material which I guess is used by upholsterers to use for this very purpose; it is heavy duty material which is difficult to cut, does not tear and is quite thick.  She used it very successfully for her project and I thought that I could use some of the remaining 'hoard' to re-line the seat.  So I found a large enough piece and cut a pattern wisely marking the front of the piece so that I didn't make a mistake!

     Readers of my blogs will already be familiar with previous lessons learned - pins and 
     soft tissue do not mix, care required when counting (especially quilt squares), placement 
     of  embellishments (especially close to the seam) and obviously checking you are sewing
     the correct side to the correct side so that your final piece isn't inside out!!!

I then checked that this piece would cover the whole of the pad with sufficient spare material to be 'gripped' by the seat/pad.  There was so I then used this template to fussy cut the top material.  This particular part of the project was the most frustrating.  I eventually pressed a cross in the middle of the material where the middle of the cross was more or less centred in the middle of the design and tried to line it up with the middle of the head boarding material.  I think I did a pretty good job when you look at the finished cover, but it was pretty tense in my sewing room..........

With the use of my recently re-found stapler and spray glue, I managed to recover the seat.  I was really very pleased with the result.  With that done, the back was a breeze!  I followed the same process and again used the spray glue and stapler to fix the material to the rest.

I borrowed my daughter's iPad in order to take the photos.  Unfortunately the lighting in my sewing room isn't studio quality and that's why the colours look different on both parts.  I can promise that they are from the same piece of material and the seat in the photo here is the 'proper' colour.

Not bad, even though I say so myself.  Feels much comfier too with the additional 'padding'.

I then stated that the chair my husband uses at work was in more of a sad state than mine had been and so I asked him to bring his chair home the following weekend and I would 'overhaul' his too.  As you can see from the photos, it should really have been condemned to the skip!  Nevertheless, I washed it (which made a HUGE difference), and then used a piece of upholstery fabric to recover the seat and back rest.  This time the seat was screwed to the base of the chair and so I had to also then remember which screws went where when I put it back together again.

This is the seat pad - or should I say what's left of the seat pad!!!

Finished chair.  Another project which success relies on the choice of fabric.

Hubby is really pleased - especially as the additional padding means that he can't feel the ridges of the seat base!