The Cheater’s Guide to Making a Slipcover {for under $20}
Hello darlings. I hope you had a wonderful weekend! I mentioned on the first day of Spring that Whats Ur Home Story is hosting Spring Home Tours all this week. My tour will be posted tomorrow but in case you wanted to see the three beautiful homes on display today, just click on a blog name below!
1. Whats Ur Home Story
2. The Happier Homemaker
Our living room is full of sunlight and light colors but we have black leather club chair that does not fit in. I finally took out my sewing machine and a $20 drop cloth (I had a couple on hand ;)) and decided to tackle a slip cover. Outside of sewing curtains and pillow covers, I don’t have a lot of experience with the sewing machine. So here is the Cheater’s Guide to Making a Slipcover. To make this project easy, I didn’t use cording or zippers.
Meet the chair…
Basic sewing tips:
Lay your fabric wrong side facing out.
Make your cuts at least a couple of inches larger for seam allowance.
Go slow and keep your seam ripper handy. 😉
Cheaters tip:
Use the “already-hemmed” edges of your drop cloth for the bottom edges of your slip cover.
Following the chair seams that already exist, lay the drop cloth across the back of the furniture and make your first cut. If your chair is wider at the top, create two overlapping flaps in the back (you can add ties to them if you like) for easy removal and fitting.
Start pinning arm sections, following the chair’s existing hems.
Its time for some bonding with your sewing machine! Sew this section and check the fit (make adjustments, if needed) before moving on.
Drape fabric on both sides of the chair, cut to fit, and keep pinning! I sewed the front “skirt” on last and left the seat open because I have a removable cushion.
Sew your cushion cover. I cheated here again by using the seam that ran down the middle of the drop-cloth for the front top hem. (So it’s perfectly straight.)
You could easily add velcro to the open back for an easy closure.
Here is how it turned out!
You can see the existing hems look great.
One more pic! It is by no means perfect but it fits a heck of lot better than a store bought one would and I love the chair much more in this space now.
Make sure you come back tomorrow for Up to Date Interior’s Spring Tour!!
This post was linked up to Thrifty Thursday @ Living Well, Spending Less
What a quick, inexpensive way to cover a chair without lots of work or skill.
Thanks Stephanie! Absolutely right. 😉
I’m so very intimidated by slip covering but you made it look easy. Cute blog!
Thanks! I was a little scared too but just went for it. 🙂 So glad you found my blog, off to visit yours!
Thanks so much for sharing this! Great tutorial for sewing dummies like me….and it turned out fab!
Thanks Jenna! I was surprised that it came out as well as it did. It sure makes a huge difference for the room. 🙂
This looks great! Good job! Did you have to change the tension or use heavy duty thread? I’m afraid to put such heavy fabric through my machine. I have an old machine.
Thanks Pam! I just used my regular thread. The drop cloth surprisingly wasn’t very thick and I didn’t have any issues at all with my sewing machine and it’s almost 20 yrs old. 😉