Slipcovers and Slip Ups - Part 1

Please join me on the odyssey that was the transformation of these chairs...

I decided to get going right away on the slipcovers for these wing backs I scooped up for a song a while ago. I know myself and, if I didn't start on these ASAP, they would have sat there for months and months collecting dust. Mr. Mel wouldn't say anything for, like, the first 6 weeks then would make snide remarks about tripping on them, repeatedly asking what my "plan" was for them, offering to drive me to the fabric store to get supplies to finish them. I'd get irritated and demand a Haagen-Dazs bar for his insolence, he'd get it for me and it would taste soooo good...wait...what was I getting at?

Okey, dokey, first things first. I have to share my fatty cat Jonesy lovin' these chairs. As soon as they were in the house he declared them property of Sir Jones. He'd sleep on them, play on them, and I even caught him gnawing on one! The other two cats, while very curious, figured out pretty quickly that these were the domain of Jones, so they steered clear. Ha ha. [Note: Jones is a 20+ lb Maine Coon… steering clear of him is something all of us in our house do alot]

While I know my way around a sewing machine, and have tackled some mighty big projects before, I have to say that this one intimidated me right from the get-go. Thankfully, there are some tremendously talented and *informative* ladies out there in the blogisphere who shared their technique for creating slipcovers for wing backs. This blog , in particular, was really helpful.

After much debate, I decided to used cotton dropcloths as fabric. When priced per yard it was only half the cost of the fabric store! I also picked up a cording at Fabricland to make my own piping.

I did the piping first. Here is a great tutorial on how to create your own custom piping. It really was crazy easy.

I started by creating a pattern of the various pieces of the chair. I didn’t create my own sections, I just followed the existing seams of the chair to make my pattern pieces. I used a roll of craft paper I had kickin’ around, pinned it to the chair and traced the seams onto it using a trusty Crayola crayon (I tried pens and pencils, seems that a crayon was the only thing that wouldn’t pierce the paper). I made sure to mark on each pattern piece the top, front/back of the piece so I knew how to put it together later on.

Once again, Jonesy is a big helper, making himself right at home amongst my pattern pieces.

I made several attempts to make the more complicated pattern pieces with the craft paper, but it just wasn’t working. This was such a tedious process that I was at my wits end. I grabbed the laptop and started surfing...and then I came across the term that would change everything: PIN FITTED SLIPCOVERS! It's pretty much just what it sounds like...no pattern pieces, no muslin, nadda. You pin the pieces of fabric onto the chair wrong side out, hand baste the seams, and then machine sew it together. Bless you Google!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this project...