Instead of acquiring new furniture these days, many prefer to upgrade the old. You can freshen up the interior by making chair coverings with your own hands (or on chairs, sofas, etc.). With their help, you will save these interior items for a long time. In addition, it is much easier to take care of removable coatings. Sometimes covers for chairs and armchairs are sewn to protect from the claws of pets.
Buy or sew?
You can buy ready-made covers, but most often it is difficult to find suitable accessories that fit perfectly into the interior of the room. Therefore, it is more reasonable to take the solution of this issue into your own hands.
Patterns downloaded on the Internet or copied from a magazine, as a rule, do not fit a specific model of chair or chair. The decision in each case should be individual.
When sewing chair covers in the living room, you can use expensive fabrics, combine a variety of textures, come up with an original style, in general, give full play to your own imagination. Beautiful self-made chair covers are a great way to be creative. You can copy the tones of the interior, you can, on the contrary, arrange color accents. In any case, the room will take on a unique look, and guests will admire your taste and skill.
We decorate the kitchen
Cushions for chairs and stools, arranged around the table, give the room a decent, even somewhat solemn appearance. In this case, you do not worry about drops of fat and dirt falling on the chairs, because if necessary, covers are easy to remove and wash. Thinking of sewing them, do not forget to take into account the color scheme of the entire room.
Kitchen chairs are best decorated with a practical fabric, unpretentious in care. In this case, the material should be sufficiently dense. It should be borne in mind that kitchen chairs in comparison with others experience the greatest loads.
Covers for kitchen furniture should not be made of too expensive material, since they will need to be washed more often than others, and they will most likely need a complete replacement sooner. There is even a cloak on the chair.
Decorate the nursery
A special conversation is about covers for the nursery. Everyone knows that with the advent of children in the house, order becomes more difficult to maintain. Kids love to grab everything with fat hands, crumble cookies, climb on a chair with fingers sticky from chocolate. At current furniture prices, you have to constantly get nervous and scold the child, which is extremely undesirable.
The problem is easily solved with the help of covers from inexpensive fabrics. They can be made in the form of funny animals or fairy-tale characters. In this case, the decorator’s imagination is unlimited. Moreover, the patterns of covers can be the simplest.
Fabrics for covers in the nursery it is advisable to take cotton, bright, cheerful colors. Cushions for chairs with their own hands from fabric into a cage, strip, large peas give the interior enthusiasm and amuse the baby. Corners can be decorated with applications.
And will I succeed?
Not sure how to sew chair covers with your own hands? Afraid not to cope? In vain!
This is a fairly simple task, accessible to everyone and not requiring large financial costs, such as hauling or buying new furniture. Craft chair covers with your own hands is an ideal activity for those who are just trying their hand at sewing. After all, making patterns of covers, as well as pillows, is much simpler than clothing patterns. Most often they have a rectangular shape and a minimum of details.
If there is no money to purchase a new furniture set, the more you think about how to sew chair covers with your own hands. With their help, you can combine newly acquired chairs with old ones into a single set. In addition, covers made by yourself will help to create a new image of the living room, kitchen or children’s room without special expenses. Thus, this fascinating hobby will also save the family budget.
What a novice should know
Beginning decorators are recommended to start with the simplest - stool design. Cushioned stool covers, is a great way to practice before making expensive decorative covers for the living room. If you have absolutely no sewing experience, try making low-cost fabric coatings first. You can even make a training case from an old sheet, in the process of work, opening it and stitching again. Having filled, so to speak, a hand, it is permissible to switch to "luxurious" expensive materials.
Covers and wraps can also drape a chair or sofa, but this is already a task for experienced craftsmen. Doing chair covers with your own hands is the easiest option, making them is available to everyone. There is no need to worry about armrests and sewing extra pillows.
How to make a chair cover with your own hands?
For wraps, you can take cotton material that is pleasant to the touch and does not accumulate static electricity. Or polyester, which is durable, does not fade and is easy to care for. The choice depends on in which room the fabric will be used, how often it will be washed. Materials that are too expensive for covers should not be taken, because they quickly get dirty.
In addition, you need to decide on accessories. Decide how you will design your wraps. They can be decorated with decorative bows, pockets for newspapers and various little things, and even ruffles.
What do we need
What will be required for work? Decorative fabric (at least one and a half meters for each chair or stool), a fringing tape, suitable in color, scissors, tape measure, pins, and, of course, a sewing machine.
Before starting work, we will determine the fabric, its texture and color. Try to imagine the finished result against the background of the overall interior. When choosing a fabric pattern, remember that vertical stripes bring a stylish, modern touch; monograms will make furniture rich and solemn.
Usually, no more than two meters of matter is spent on each chair. Its consumption for the cover is calculated after drawing a cutting pattern, and you need to remember to add the right amount of fabric for the folds at the corners of the "skirt".
Getting to work
Before you sew the covers on chairs with your own hands, be sure to make a pattern. Measuring individually each detail of the chair, record the dimensions and draw a drawing on thick paper, depicting all the details in full size. Then the paper blanks are laid on the fabric, taking into account the seam allowances, cut out. Parts are swept together with threads of contrasting color from the wrong side.
The "draft" of the product is tried on a chair. If the workpiece sits neatly and does not require adjustment, the seams are sewn on a sewing machine, the basting is removed. Do not forget to iron each seam carefully with an iron.
The most important thing in the process of cutting - do not forget to leave a margin for allowances under the "skirt". It should be borne in mind that after washing, the fabric may shrink. If the distance between the legs of the chairs expands downward, then such "flared" interior items are decorated with covers with additional wedges.
The classic cover for a regular chair with a back most often consists of 5 parts. This is the seat, its back, back, details of the "skirt" and the actual "skirt". The back of the cover and the back of the seat are one part that stretches over the back of the chair.
To draw a diagram of the cover, measure the height and width of the back, the height of the seat, as well as its depth and width. The consumption of fabric is determined by the length of the "skirt", with 32 cm need to be added to each fold. The allowances for the seams should be at least 1 cm. If the width of the fabric is not enough for the entire "skirt", it can be assembled from separate pieces. In this case, one should not forget about allowances for additional seams.
How to fix the cover
A home decorator should be well aware of not only how to sew chair covers with their own hands, but also how to securely fix them to chairs. This can be done in different ways - with the help of buttons, zippers, Velcro, decorative ties. Covers must be tightly fixed to the legs. If you are planning to make separate seat and back covers, you should consider how to connect them together.
Most often, fastenings are made in the form of bows in the corners, which are tied to the legs of the chair. Too tight a cover can simply not fit on a chair. It is better to sew it with some margin, which will disappear after shrinkage, and if not, it can be decorated.
Decorative ties are sewn by hand. You can cut them yourself. Narrow tubes of fabric are sewn, twisted to the front side, their ends are tucked in and sewn with a blind seam. If you don’t want to bother with making ties, you can take ready-made braid, for example, cotton. Mounting the cover depends on your imagination. Can be fixed with Velcro, hooks or with the help of beautiful decorative bows.
Another option for fastening the cover is to bend along the edge of the seat part (not forgetting the additional consumption of fabric at the same time), insert an elastic band or cord into it, which is tightened and firmly tied. This option is perfect if you sew covers separately on the seat and back of the chair. As a rule, this method of fastening fixes the seat cover better than ties, it is very convenient for stools and chairs without a back.
How to make money to a decorator
The ability to make chair coverings with your own hands can bring tangible benefits.
Decor ideas for furniture covers, including wedding ones, are increasingly gaining popularity in Russia. People who managed to find themselves in the profession of a decorator make good money by decorating banquet and wedding halls with fabrics.
At the same time, it is not necessary to sew new covers every time for the next event, it is enough to have several elegant sets of various colors and offer them to the customer to choose from. Of course, the covers require regular washing and ironing, for which it is desirable to have a steam generator.