A few weeks ago I decided I needed to quickly recover an accent balloon chair that I picked up ages ago at a consignment shop in Lincoln NE. I had recovered this chair during the whole grain sack craze with you guessed it a grain sack. At the time grain sacks where hard to come by here and the gorgeous French confection that I had imagined in my head had to be replaced by an American, Midwestern grain sack. To say I am ready to lose this look is an understatement but I didn’t have the time to go thru the whole recover process. I thought you might be in the same boat with the holiday season around the corner. I thought I would share the process.

For my chair I started with a piece of linen that I already had on hand. Less than 3/4 of a yard.

1. Measure the width and length of your slip seat and add about 4″.

2. Drape over your chair, smooth fabric and mark with an invisible pen where you need to cut notches around the chair leg coming up the back and in the front for the post of the arm. Make sure to allow a little extra fabric on the notches to tuck down into the post a bit. Don’t cut it too deep.

3. Slit the fabric and replace onto the chair and fit, pulling fabric until it lays smoothly. You’ll find at the posts that you will need to widen your cut to accommodate your posts creating a U at each post. I forgot to take this picture but you get the idea from the photo of the finished U.

4. Now that you have cut your 4 U’s you can replace your cover fitting and marking to the shape of your chair allowing 1/2″ for seam allowance all the way around. I just ran my invisible pen all the way around the chair. The ink mark is the welted edge on the chair. Remove and cut off excess fabric.

5. Make binding for your U’s buy cutting strips of the linen about 1 3/4″ wide. I didn’t but this should be cut on the bias and it’s easiest to do this once and then cut the binding to length as needed.

6. At this time you will also want to make bias strips for your ties. You will need a total of 4 about 14-16″ long depending on how long your want your tails. Play with this before you cut. if you want to tie in a bow measure accordingly. You will make both binding and ties the same way.

7. Go to ironing board and fold each strip in half vertically and iron. Than bring raw edges to the middle and press. That’s it, you’ve created binding.

8. Determine how long your binding needs to be to cover the raw edge of the U. Slide binding over raw edge and top stitch close to the edge making sure to catch the stitches both on the top and bottom.

9. For your ties just top stitch binding closed.

10. Reposition your cover on the chair again and place your ties where they are comfortable.

11. I cut my ties in half and attached them to the top of each side of the U.

12. Next comes the fun part! I wanted a short pleated ruffle with a raw edge. I cut strips on the straight of the grain about 2 1/2″ wide. If you are hand gathering figure the circumference of the chair minus the U’s and multiply it by 2.5. This will tell you how long to make your strips.

13. With your machine, zigzag with a very small setting the bottom edge about 5/8″ in from the raw edge. Now you need to unravel your fabric. I just took a large straight pin and used it to pull the threads. You will probably need to seam your strips together. I like to do a French seam for this. Stitch right sides together with 3/8″ seam allowance, turn to other side and stitch again with a 1/2″ seam allowance, Press and top stitch. This creates a nice clean seam with no raw edges.Pulling the threads took the most time on this project although it wasn’t bad.

14. Let’s gather! Take a piece of floss embroidery or dental and zigzag over the top and pull your string fitting it to the outer edge of you slipcover, pin. I used my ruffler attachment for my Bernina on a 12 stitch setting to give me more of a pleated effect and it used much less fabric. With the ruffler I had this taken care of in no time.

15. With a 1/2 seam allowance sew the ruffle with right sides together to the bottom edge of your fabric all the way around.

16. You’re done!!! Fit the cover to your chair and in no time you have new covers for your dining room chairs.

This could be customized in so many ways and it really is a simple project. A piece of ribbon could be added just above the ruffle for a bit more definition. A monogram could be embroidered to the middle of the seat. The opportunities are endless. I hope this helps you out.

Let me know if you try this, I would love to see photos.

Thanks for stopping

Shelley