An Almost No Sew Slipcovered Chair

What do an ASCP painted chair, a Home Depot drop cloth and an old bridesmaid’s dress have in common?  Not much… but they came together this past weekend to create this…

In all my purging last week, I uncovered a chair in the deep, dark depths of my closet (still trying to get up the nerve to show you THAT before picture).  I brought the chair home from my mom’s about a year ago and painted it for a little nook off my bedroom.  It’s a petite chair, the perfect size for a vanity or desk, and with a coat of ASCP in Duck Egg Blue and a scrap of fun fabric, it was a fun and unexpected bit of color in the space.

But a few months ago, that nook was repurposed into an office space for Mike and my poor little chair got shoved into the abyss that was my closet.  In discovering it this past weekend, I found a new purpose for it… but in order for it to work, the chair needed a new look.  I didn’t want to paint it again and instead decided to attempt a slipcover.

Let me be completely honest here.  I am not a seamstress.  I own a sewing machine and I occasionally break my sewing machine out, plug it in and attempt to sew straight lines.  So, for this project to be successful, I needed to come up with a slipcover for my chair that was simple and that involved minimal sewing.  The term “slipcover” might be a little misleading.  With the amount of stapes and hot glue involved, there’s no way this cover is “slipping” off my chair.  But, with NO budget for my impromptu project, I also knew I needed to use items I had on hand.  So I grabbed my staple gun, a glue gun and started searching through my “stuff”.  I set off to find a suitable fabric in my scrap fabric pile with enough yardage to cover the chair.  And then I spied an old bridesmaid’s dress in the corner of the closet, sitting atop the Goodwill pile.

This bridesmaid’s dress was gorgeous… beautiful brown dupioni silk with a layer of tulle underneath.  I’d always loved the dress and hoped to find an occasion to wear it again…but it was still a bridemaids dress and of course, I never did.  My favorite part of the dress was the bit of tulle on the bottom.  Enough to give the dress a little flounce, but not enough to be obnoxious.  But, the tulle on that bridesmaid’s dress had the exact same drop as the distance from the chair’s seat to the floor… AND it just happened to be the exact length needed to cover the distance around the legs of the chair.  It was meant to be.

So, I did it.  I took a deep breath and cut the tulle out of the dress and cut a vertical cut to open the seam.  It was a little liberating!  I’ve never cut up a dress before.

Once I cut it, I stapled it to the seat of my chair… right along the edge of the upholstered seat.  Yes, I stapled it…. I’ll staple and glue over sew any day.  And just like that, my chair had a pretty tulle petticoat.

The next step was to go through my scrap fabrics and find something to cover the chair with.   I wanted to keep the color neutral and having just donated 3/4′s of my old fabric scraps, my options were limited.  I found several scraps of washed drop cloth from an earlier craft room project.  I pulled the scraps out, and wouldn’t you know?  I had just enough fabric to slipcover the little chair.  An added bonus?  The drop cloths come hemmed, so I didn’t have to deal with hemming it myself!

Once again, I stapled the drop cloth over the tulle, folding in a few places to create some box-pleats.  Then, I pinned two pieces of fabric together, wrong-side out, along the front and back of the chair.  I sewed along my pin lines (3 straight lines, super easy), but I think you could also get away with stitch-witching the seams or using fabric glue to go completely no-sew on the chair.

I brought the seamed front and back pieces back to the chair, trimmed the excess fabric around the seams and turned the right side out… then slid the finished piece right over the back of the chair.  Finally, I took a small square of fabric, folded over the edges, heated up the glue gun and covered my staples on the seat.

And just because I had one long piece of scrap fabric left (and because I can’t leave well enough alone), I folded it over into a sash and tied a simple knot in back.  I added a little fabric pin that Jack made me last year for Mother’s Day for a little color and because it just looked pretty!

A whole new look and done in an hour!  It doesn’t get any easier than that.  My favorite part?  The little bits of tulle that peek out from under the chair’s skirt… it makes me smile every time I see it.  I had a little too much fun fluffing the tulle during while snapping pics of the chair earlier today!  The very best part?  I used materials I had on hand, so the project didn’t cost a penny.

Check back Monday to see where I put my newly slipcovered chair.  A hint… it’s in the only girly room in my house!

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