DIY: Re-Upholstering Chair Cushions

A little while ago I shared my recent addiction to making over my living room.  I’ve been busy as a bee whenever I get a spare moment sanding, painting and finishing furniture I have to take it from a random assortment of furniture that I ended up acquiring into a home.  Now that my furniture was nicely painted in burgundy I decided that I had to get some new fabric to liven up the look.  I went to several fabric stores in NYC before deciding that Mood seemed to have the best selection of upholstery/home dec fabrics I could find - the entire lower floor for that matter.

I brought my color swatches and took pictures with my phone to remember what the print would like like and got swatches to bring home and make sure that it still looked good before purchasing the fabric. The fabric I originally chose ended up not looking like the correct shade of grey once I saw it against my table and I went back to the drawing board before finding this retro geometric print that I loved.  Since most of my furniture in the apartment is solid, a print is great compliment to add life and character to your furnishings.

I bought 1 1/2 yards of fabric just to be on the safe side but I probably could have done fine with 1 1/4 yards.

Tools you'll need:
1 1/2 yards of fabric - depending on the size of your seat cushions
Screwdriver
Heavy Duty Flat Staple Remover
Pliers
Safety Glasses (I actually just wore eye glasses)
Heavy Duty Staple Gun
Heavy Duty Staples
Pen/marker/chalk
Sharp Scissors

The first thing I did was remove the cushions from the chair frame using a screw driver.

Then using a staple remover, gently slide the remover under the staple and I found that a slight wiggle helps loosen the staples to pull them up.  If only one end of the staple comes out, you can use pliers to easily pull the other end out.  There were a couple staples that brute force couldn't muster out so I just left them in the chair.

My chairs were previously covered in 2 layers of fabric and starting to get really thick so I pulled both layers off and used the original fabric covering as a pattern for cutting out my new fabric.  If desired you can iron out the fabric so it's nice and flat (but I didn't bother).  Now carefully trace out the pattern from the old covering with a pen/chalk and trace out as many as the number of chairs you are covering.

Cut out the traced patterns using sharp scissors and center the chair seats against the wrong side of the fabric.


Carefully place pins as you center the seat in the fabric with a gentle relaxed but firm pull.  Do not pull too tight or you will get puckering.  Once your fabric has been placed you can use the staple gun to staple down the fabric.  I started at the centers of all four sides for even distribution of fabric and worked my way outwards.



When you get to the corners pull gently as you carefully fold the edges to wrap the corners - kind of like wrapping a present before securing with staples.

After months of re-painting, sanding and finding the perfect fabric I was so excited to see the finished results!  At last a room to call my own...now to tackle my next furniture project!