Project 1: Make the Chairs Great Again! - Part 2

Putting the fabric on the chair was a little more challenging than I thought. As I mentioned in part 1, save your templates. It will make this project so much easier. We made a couple of mistakes here and there (I'll let you know what they are), but for the first time trying something like this, I think the first chair turned out pretty good. We will definitely apply our learnings when we are ready to work on the second one--but not yet; I need a couple of days off and a big glass of wine.

We started with the seat portion. Get enough fabric to cover the whole seat, with some to spare. Start by stapling both sides in one spot (right in the middle), just so it's easier to handle the fabric. Mistake 1: I had barely enough fabric towards the back to tuck between the seat and the back--leave more fabric than what the picture shows.

Around the leg posts, make a slit on the fabric and tuck one part between the seat and the back and wrap the other side around the legs. Cut the excess and staple the fabric behind the chair. Mistake 2: our slit was too towards the middle of the chair, not the ends. When was time to wrap the fabric around the legs, we almost didn't have enough fabric to cover the seat (see photo below). We were able to move things around and make it work, but it created some tension in the corner.

Continue to staple the sides from the back to the front. Mistake 3: make sure you are pulling the fabric towards the back of the chair and not straight down when stapling it. If you pull it straight down, you will have too much fabric to work on in the front of the chair and it will be difficult to create a clean front corner.

For the front corner, we were so stressed to get it right that I forgot to get a picture. After you staple both sides from back to front, you will end up with some folded fabric on the corners. Fold it towards the back of the chair very tightly and staple that side. Cut any excess fabric, pull the remaining fabric (also tightly) over the fold you just created and staple the bottom part. I only have a finished photo in which I placed a tack to hide the staple, but it will give you an idea.

Moving on to the back. Just like the seat piece, we covered the front with enough fabric to fold on top, sides, and between seat and back. Also cut a slit so fabric can be tuck between seat and back and wrap around leg posts. Make sure it clean and neat around post as this is the part of the chair that will be visible. We started stapling the top, then the sides, from bottom to top. On the corners, use the same method used for the seat corners.

Finally, we covered the back. We were wondering how we were going to do that in a way that it didn't look crappy and we weren't satisfied each time we just played with the fabric before stapling it, but at the end we don't think it was bad. We used a few staples to hold it in place. We knew we were going to cover it with tacks afterwards. Also, we added the dust cover to the bottom of the chair.

Can't say it was the most fun project I've ever worked or the one with the best results, but I like it! Like I said, it is definitely better than it was and we will make improvements to the second chair. Final results: