Recovering An Old Chair Pillow

This particular chair I got off the sidewalk in front of Pier 1 Imports a few years ago. It was only slightly damaged and seemed simple enough to touch up with some paint, which is what I did when I got it home. I paid $69.00 dollars for it, which I knew was a real bargain.

A few years have passed and now the white pillow is getting worn out and just crappy looking. Time to recover that chair seat. Now, what's the best way to go about it? Carefully take the pillow seams apart and disassemble the fabric, piece by piece. This creates a template for your new cover.

Below you can see the pieces removed and taken apart. Now all I did was pin them to the new fabric and cut out the new pieces.

Here, the pieces are pinned to the new fabric.

Just to be on the safe side, I've pinned the new fabric to the pillow to make sure it will all fit. It should if I followed the template correctly.

Sewing right sides together, the pillow is almost complete. This job is best done with a sewing machine and some basic sewing skills, but honestly not that difficult to do. Now the issue becomes this: what is the best way to close up this pillow. A zipper is great, but a lot more work, or the use of Velcro which works great but is still some extra work. I decided to leave an opening, stuff the pillow in and hand sew the pillow closed. I picked this option because the pillow is hardly ever used and should hold up for a few years, before it needs to be replaced again.

Here's the pillow all finished. Great that it looks clean and like new again. I used 1 and 1/2 yards of fabric. The fabric was $6.99 a yard on the clearance rack and I used a 40% off coupon at Joann's. Not a bad deal and pretty easy to sew up.

Christy

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