Friday 12 September 2014

Sitting Pretty & Simple Re-upholstery On a Budget Tutorial



Hello Friends! Apologies for being so quiet for the last couple of weeks but I have been sooooo incredibly busy that there just weren't enough hours in the day for blogging. I've been doing some decorating and DYIing and general life got in the way, too. 

Some of you may recall me mentioning decorating the living room a very long time ago. And that's true. We finished most of the work months ago but still had some little 'finishing' touches that needed to be... errr.. finished :).

One of those 'outstanding' projects (meaning incomplete, not super pretty) were our dining chairs. We're quite fond of our chairs so we didn't see any point in buying new ones. But Hubster and I both agreed that the seats really needed refreshing. The seat pads can be unscrewed so we knew it wouldn't bee too difficult to recover them with new fabric. 

But what we found most difficult was sourcing a reasonably priced fabric, that wouldn't end up costing more that a set of brand new chairs... Quality upholstery fabrics we've been looking at were about £50/metre. We needed 3 meters of fabric. Ouch!

But one lovely summer afternoon we stumbled upon some curtains on sale at Dunelm. They had an interesting design which matched our colour scheme and the fabric seemed quite strong and durable. And most importantly, they only cost £25.00!  For our project we only used one curtain so all in all we spent £12.50 on having our chairs reupholstered. Can't be bad, can it?

I was so excited with the end result and how easy it was to do, that I just had to share it! So I prepared a short tut, which I hope will inspire you to inject some new life into your upholstered furniture - and you'll have unique 'designer' pieces for a fraction of the cost! :)



1. Start by preparing a template for cutting. On a large piece of paper draw an outline of the seat pad, adding about 3 inches on each side for wrapping the fabric around the pad. Depending on the thickness of your seat pad you may need to alter this margin.


2. Using chalk or a pencil draw an outline around the template. Cut it out using a rotary cutter or scissors.


3. Wrap the fabric around the seat pad and secure with a staple gun. And that's it! Simples!



I'd love to know what do you think! Was it better 'before' or 'after'?

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

Big crafty hugs



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5 comments:

Jenny Marples said...

A fantastic new lease of life for your chairs! Love the idea of using curtains as you're right, upholstery fabric can cost a fortune. Have you seen the no prep Americana Decor Chalky Finish paints? Awesome for altering too. Jenny x

Asia King (aka Joanna K) said...

Thank you so much Jenny! Yes, I'm a big fan of Chalky Finish paints! I've just painted with them my new dressing table - watch this space as piccies will follow soon! :) xx

Crafting Queen said...

You did a great job!

Joanna Wiśniewska said...

Wygladaja bardzo fajnie :)
Widzialam kiedys jak to sie robi. Nasz sasiad nam pomagal zmieniac poduszki na krzeslach. To bylo bardzo dawno. Mile wspomnienia przywilalas.

Ros Crawford said...

They look brilliant! I did all mine a while ago with fabric from Laura ashley that matched the wallpaper ... It didn't cost much at all and I was also able to get some of that clear vinyl which I then put over the fabric ... we have cats who often sit on the chairs and so they are easy to wipe and keep clean.

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