Chair Cover

Here is another project I did for the new house. My daughter had a chair in her room that she got several years ago, when she was into the whole pink camouflage trend.  Now that she is a teenager, she is over that look, but she still loves the chair.  Out comes my Brother sewing machine and it is time for Mom to the Rescue!

My daughter picked out the fabric for the new slipcover on her own.  I love the color and the pattern.  I started out by measuring from the top of the chair and running the tape measure down into the scoop of the chair, and then down to the bottom edge.

Then my daughter and I worked together to draw a perfect circle for the slipcover.  It really was not all that hard!  We folded the fabric in half, tied a pencil to a string and while my daughter held the string tight on the folded edge of the fabric, I moved the pencil along in a perfect arch to create a half circle.  Since it was drawn on the fold of the fabric, once I cut on the pencil line it was a perfect circle of fabric!

I know I did not really NEED to finish the edges, but I did do an overcasting stitch all the way around the circle.  I think it gave it a cleaner look.  Then I folded over the fabric and did a blanket stitch to create a casing all the way around the circle.

I love the variety of stitches there are to choose from on my Brother sewing and embroidery machine.  Then I fed elastic through the casing.  Here is a little trick . . . put a safety pin on both ends of the piece of elastic before you start to feed it through the casing.  On the front end, this helps you to continue to push the elastic through, but on the back end it helps in case you pull too hard and the back end of the elastic slips inside of the casing.  Since it has a safety pin on it, you can easy find that end that got away from you and push it back out.

Then we just put the whole thing over the chair.  Yes, it is not as tailored at the original chair, but my daughter loves it.  And if she spills anything on it I can just pull it off and toss it in the wash!